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UNITED STATES OF AMEKIOA. 




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NOT OF 


HER FATHER’S RACE 

% 



WILLIAM T. MEREDITH 



NEW YORK ' 


CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 

104 & 106 Fourth Avenue 




Copyright, 

1890, 

By O. M. DUNHAM. 




All rights reserved. 




. V 



f'- 



THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS 
RAHWAY, N. J, 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 



PAGE 

I. 

James and Jennie Andersen, . 


I 

II. 

Mi$s Gillingham and the Reverend 

Mr. 



Jones, 


15 

III. 

The Negro Church, 


22 

IV. 

The Hawk and the Victim, 


30 

V. 

A Race Battle and Lost Sister Sallie, 

33 

VI. 

A Man and a Dog, . . . . 


45 

VII. 

The Great Thomsen Estate, of 

Eng- 



land, 


48 

VIII. 

The Grave-yard Secret, 


59 

IX. 

The Mystery, . . . . , 


65 

X. 

Jennie and Her Father Become 

New 



Yorkers, 


67 

XL 

John Anspach, Banker, 

, 

75 

XII. 

The Son, 


80 

XIII. 

Name and Title, .... 


83 

XIV. 

Two Disinterested Friends, 


88 

XV. 

The Matchmaker 

, 

92 

XVI. 

How Fishbourne Became Lucky, 


96 

XVII. 

Wilhelmina’s Dinner, . 


lOI 

XVIII. 

The Anspach Ball, . . . . 


115 

XIX. 

The Stock Speculator, 


125 

XX. 

The Runaway Match, 


131 

XXL 

The Stock Exchange, . 

. 

143 

XXII. 

Tuxedo, 


146 


iii 


IV 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 

XXIII. 

Dead Man’s Spring, 

. 157 

XXIV. 

Newport, . . . 

160 

XXV, 

The Fox Hunt, .... 

'. 167 

XXVI. 

She Tells Him, .... 

I8I 

XXVII. 

The House of Old Masters, 

. 186 

XXVIII. 

Jennie is Engaged to be Married, 

I9I 

XXIX. 

PoKONo AND Sweetwater, . 

. 198 

XXX. 

The Little Teacher, . . ' . 

206 

XXXI. 

The Ruin of Pokono, . 

. 212 

XXXII. 

Not a Stranger, .... 

226 

XXXIII. 

The Conspirators, 

. 230 

XXXIV. 

A Brute Meets a Thief, 

240 

XXXV. 

An Approaching Catastrophe, . 

• 249 

XXXVI. 

Down Hill, 

257 

XXXVII. 

The Fatal Picture, 

• 259 

XXXVIII. 

The Old Love, 

264 

XXXIX. 

“ I AM NOT Black,” . . . 

. 281 

XL. 

What was the End of it All? 

284 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


CHAPTER I. 

JAMES AND JENNIE ANDERSEN. 

‘ ‘ jr)APA, the bull’s a-bellowing, Auntie Emma say 

1 she fear he break loose.” 

“What do you say, Jennie?” And the father 
rose from the grass where he had been sitting with 
arms folded across his knees, gazing vacantly at the 
field pines that shut out the horizon before him. 
“What do you say, Jennie?” he said, curving his 
slim, sunburned hand for an ear trumpet; “Speak 
louder, Jennie.” 

A tali, slender man of forty-five, with yellow hair, 
his neglected beard and hollow voice betokening 
one in ill-health — A girl of fifteen, with black hair, 
and dark brown eyes that shone from a beautiful 
face with aquiline features, and the hue of a ripe 
peach beneath a white skin — there they stood, father 
and child, James and Jennie Andersen. 

He was 'fair and she was dark; he was worn and 
she was bright and beautiful. 

Virginians said that he was white, that she was 
black, a slave driver’s octoroon — though no eye 
could detect the curse either in skin or feature-— 


i 


2 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


black from the taint of a mother who had three 
drops of Anglo-Saxon blood for one drop of African 
in her veins. 

Virginia law would have adjudged the father 
guilty of felony had he been the husband of the 
mother of his child ; * his child brought into the 
world outside the law of liian, but seemingly as per- 
fect as any white creature made by God. God 
must have watched over her, one would think, with 
special care. For had she not grown to be what she 
was since she was four years old without a mother? 
— an orphan, save for the listless care of her father, 
and old Auntie Emma, who sat smoking her pipe 
in the doorway of the cabin, her black, shining face 
visible in the clear atmosphere, far away across the 
green fields, 

“Papa, the bull’s a-bellowing, he break loose,’’ 
the girl said distinctly in James Andersen’s ear, 
and the man straightened himself up, with a gesture 
of impatience, casting no look at the child, and 
went shambling off across the field, leaving her 
standing with the air fluttering her short calico 
gown against her bare legs. 

She watched him go, and then went back up the 
grassy slope to Auntie Emma, with the soft step of 
beauty, as noiseless as the great hawk that soared 
slowly through the sky far above her head. 

* If any white person intermarry with a colored person, or 
any colored person intermarry with a white person — he shall 
be confined in the penitentiary not less than two years nor 
more than five years. — Va. Code^ 1887, chap. 185, sec. 3788. 


JAMES AND JENNIE ANDERSEN. 


3 


Miss Gillingham stood in the negro school-room 
near Lunenberg Court House. The fifteen scholars, 
one of whom was Jennie Andersen, had been sent 
to their seats from the spelling class to work sums 
in addition that the teacher had set down for them, 
and Miss Gillingham turned to gaze out of the 
window while awaiting the time for the arithmetic 
class. 

A slim little woman of forty years, with a shapely 
head and brown hair, the daughter of a Pennsyl- 
vania farmer, living near Chester, on the Delaware, 
Miss Gillingham had grown up with a religious 
mind and love for abstract right. Her mother was 
a Philadelphia Quaker. She remembered the Civil 
War. As a little child she had listened to her 
mother’s oft-repeated tale of the escaping slave, 
who was fed and harbored in the barn for three 
days. The child’s first story had been “ Uncle 
Tom’s Cabin.” 

All her life she had heard her father discourse 
of Lucretia Mott, the agitator, and Wendell 
Phillips, the orator, in the cause of anti-slavery. 
What wonder then, when at forty, marriage had not 
come to this thoughtful woman, that she aston- 
ished her family and the entire neighborhood by 
announcing her intention of going to Virginia to 
teach the blacks. Father and mother protested 
against it, but Miss Gillingham took the train to 
Philadelphia, and returned the next day, with an 
appointment and an agreement, to teach a negro 
school at Lunenberg Court House, the very center 


4 


NOT OF HER FA 7 HER ’S RACE. 


of the Black belt of Virginia, at a salary of fifteen 
dollars a month. 

The view from the Colored School window was 
not yet entirely familiar to Miss Gillingham. A 
crooked street, with a muddy roadway, two grocery 
stores and a butcher’s shop with a vacant space inter- 
vening, were on one side. On the other, stood a beer 
saloon of the modern type, an old-fashioned tavern, 
and next door, the post office. Then came three two- 
story dwellings, and beyond these was the Whites’ 
school house, a one-story structure, made of logs, the 
exact counterpart of the negro school building. 
Farther on, was the Episcopal Church, a relic of old 
Virginia and the days of British rule. Madison once 
worshiped there and Tarleton’s soldiers had slept in 
the pews. Its shingled sides and belfry tower were 
in the last stages of decay. Wherever the eye could 
reach the open country, tall pines came into view, 
standing like ranks of soldiers, round the russet 
cornfields. 

The short street was the entire town of Liinen- 
berg Court House, and it seemed to contain all the 
active life of the county. Here and there a man 
stood listlessly before a store smoking. Little chil- 
dren were playing on the sidewalk; a group of 
colored men and women were gossiping before the 
post office door, waiting for the distribution of the 
mail, a great event with the negroes in Virginia. A 
white man, with a wide brimmed hat of the cow- 
boy pattern, tight pantaloons and jacket, was mount- 
ing his horse before the tavern. A pair of half- 


JAMES AND JENNIE ANDERSEN 5 

Starved oxen, not bigger than heifers, drew a two- 
wheel'ed cart loaded with wood, slowly by, on top 
of which was perched an old negro preacher, with 
a white necktie and a high hat bound with a mourn- 
ing band, which he lifted politely to the teacher 
in the window. This was the Rev. Mr. Jones, the 
father of one of Miss Gillingham’s pupils. 

Miss Gillingham had watched the scene out of 
the school window a minute or two, when her atten- 
tion was drawn to the room behind her, by the death- 
like stillness that prevailed. 

She turned suddenly and faced her pupils. Two 
rows of desks with benches behind them, were 
occupied by the scholars. Abraham Lincoln Jones, 
the son of the reverend gentleman who had just 
passed driving the ox cart — a big fat boy of seven- 
teen, as black as a crow — sat at his desk asleep. 
Jennie Andersen, who was in the seat behind liim, 
had torn up a piece of white paper and twisted 
Abraham Lincoln’s curly hair round the slips in all 
sorts of fantastic shapes. There he sat sound 
asleep, with head erect and his slate before him, 
while the school looked on and wondered what 
would happen next. Something did happen. Just 
as Miss Gillingham looked sternly at Jennie Ander- 
sen with a sentence of punishment springing to her 
lips, Abraham Lincoln Jones snored loudly. This 
was enough; the teacher smiled and the whole 
school burst into a wild roar of laughter. 

The fifteen scholars were a study. Abraham 
Lincoln Jones was the blackest, and from him they 


6 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


were shaded down, girls and boys of all sizes and 
ages, to Jennie Andersen, who was as white a5 Miss 
Gillingham. 

It was fortunate for Jennie that the classification 
of the two races under the Virginia law, was not 
enforced against the whites in the negro schools, as 
under it she would have been excluded from the black 
school as a white. The law regards all people from 
one-quarter up to full negro blood as black, all with 
less than one-quarter negro blood as white. 

Yet, while by law Jennie was white, her tainted 
blood made her black in the eyes of the world, and 
stern custom would have driven her from the white 
schools. 

With the law on one side and stern custom on the 
other, the poor child really had no place with either 
race. 

Miss Gillingham had gone to live with Mrs. 
Erskine. Her five dollars a week was a great piece 
of good luck to a family, whose earlier days were, 
spent in the enjoyment of riches, but who had eaten 
nothing but the bitter crusts of poverty for many a 
year. 

The Erskine plantation was one of the oldest in 
the State. The Manor, as it was called the county 
through, dated back a hundred years before the 
Revolution. 

Col. Erskine had been a great man in the neighbor- 
hood before the war. His three thousand acres, when 
Virginia seceded from the Union, supported four 
hundred and fifty negroes, besides giving him every 


JAMES AND JENNIE AND EE SEN 


7 


year a large income from tobacco. He was an up- 
right Virginia gentleman, a pillar of the Presbyterian 
church at Powhatan, five miles from the Manor. 
He loved his wife, he loved his two boys, and he 
was kind to his slaves. No negro who behaved 
himself, had ever been sold from his plantations. 

When the war broke out, Col. Erskine could look 
back on an unbroken career of prosperity and hap- 
piness. Unambitious, contented with his lot, the 
increase of his slaves made him richer year by year. 
He hunted foxes in the winter, and spent his sum- 
mers at the White Sulphur Springs, with his hand- 
some wife and fair haired boys. 

War came; Col. Erskine raised a company of 
recruits and went to fight under Lee. Now, for the 
first time, he saw what the struggle of life is where 
competition is keen, in the struggle of the battle- 
field. Regularly every three months he came to 
Lunenberg for a day, to kiss his wife and boys. 
Then he came no more. A gallant soldier had 
disappeared in one of the sorties from Lee’s en- 
trenchments. 

The negroes planted and gathered the crops, mar- 
ried and died, for three years longer, till one day 
Grant’s army swept across the country south of 
Richmond, and Lee surrendered. • Then the whole 
social structure of Lunenberg tumbled to pieces. 

When Miss Gillingham came to Virginia the 
county was growing up in forests. The soil was 
worthless. The land, always poor, had been of 
value in slavery times solely to raise negroes, and 


8 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


with the fall of slavery, the Erskine Manor, which 
would have fetched a large fortune at the auction 
block in the days of bondage, became almost 
valueless. 

Mrs. Erskine had been brought up to the plant- 
er’s simple life of ease, and freedom from care 
and anxiety. All the rich slaveholder desired, fell 
readily into a careless hand. Servants, horses and 
carriages, leisure, the respect of a host of inferiors, 
were his. • 

But in the day of Freedom, without slaves and 
without money, Mrs. Erskine and her two sons 
were poor. Without thrift, ignorant of the ways 
of the world, proud, demanding a consideration 
at which even their little world laughed, they were 
poverty-stricken. 

So it came to pass that when Miss* Gillingham took 
charge of the colored school and went to board 
with Mrs. Erskine, Newton, the elder son, was a 
car-driver in Richmond. John, the younger, kept a 
negro grocery store at Lunenberg, in a‘ building 
that his father had erected near the railroad sta- 
tion, for the use of his guests while waiting for 
the train. Mrs. Erskine was living in the old 
Manor; keeping body and soul together by raising 
a little tobacco on the bottom land, the work being 
done on shares by four decrepit old negroes — the 
last of the four hundred and fifty slaves. 

John Erskine, a fine looking man of forty, with 
a comely wife, who came from Richmond, looked 
out of place exchanging meal and coffee for tobacco 


JAMES AND JENNIE ANDERSEN. 9 

and eggs, with the negroes. One rainy day, while 
Miss Gillingham was waiting in the store, she put 
her hand on young Harry Erskine’s head and said; 
“Mr. Erskine, what are you going to do with your 
son Harry when he grows up?” 

“Do with him? God knows what I can do; he’s 
sixteen now,” John replied. 

The afternoon of the day that Jennie Andersen 
played her prank in school, Miss Gillingham laugh- 
ingly related the occurrence to Mrs. Erskine at the 
Manor. Mrs. Erskine grew red in the face and said: 

“Nothing but the whip will ever tame that little 
nigger; I’ve watched her.” 

Miss Gillingham was silent ; she was learning the 
ways of the community of Lunenberg Court House. 

After dinner the teacher went out on the back 
porch, and there she found Jennie standing beside 
her father, who was eating his dinner. He had 
come over to the Erskine Plantation with a load of 
wood, and his daughter brought a snack to him. 

Andersen’s mother was Col. Erskine’s sister. An- 
dersen had not entered the Manor front door for 
twenty years. How could he enter ? He lived with 
his negro child. He sold his relations wood, traded 
tobacco at the store with them, and worked a small 
piece of their bottom land on shares. On the road 
it was always a “How de do.” But when he was 
at the Manor over meal hours, which was very 
often, he ate his dinner in the kitchen, or on the 
back porch. 

Harry Erskine had heard Miss Gillingham tell 


10 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


his grandmother the story of Jennie Andersen’s 
pranks in school. He thought she had been 
whipped and he was anxious to hear about it. 
Mr. Ellis, the teacher at the White School, had 
flogged him the day before. 

AVhile her father was eating his dinner on the 
porch, Jennie had left his side to pick a handful of 
red myrtle berries. She was dropping them, one by 
one, into the half-filled well bucket, watching the 
circles in the water with her head bent down, when 
Harry Erskine came up, and gave her a push that 
made her lose her balance, and her long hair fell over 
her forehead into the water. 

“You have had a whipping, Jennie,’’ he said. 

“No, I haven’t, Harry Erskine, but you have,’’ 
she answered. “Mr. Ellis, he find it a heap harder 
to teach the white children, than Miss Gillingham 
to teach us. 

“Harry, look here, you drop this berry in the 
bucket, count one, two, and then wish anything you 
want before the water ring stops.’’ 

But Harry was not to be put off about the whip- 
ping. 

“I know the teacher whipped you, Jennie,’’ 
and he looked over his shoulder at Miss Gillingham. 

Jennie started up, threw the handful of berries 
into the water, and walked away without a word. 

When James Andersen turned his oxen home- 
ward that evening, he was ill. It was not an un- 
common thing with him. He was weak in body and 
heart. He shivered in the chill November night 


JAMES AND JENNIE ANDERSEN. II 

air, and pulled his scanty over coat, patched and 
repatched with many colors, up around his neck. 
Jennie sat on the cart beside him; he drew her 
close to him. 

“I’m cold, Jennie.’’ 

“You sick, papa?’’ she asked. “I’ll make a 
nice, warm cup of tea for you, and Auntie Emma 
will get you some hot water for your feet.’’ 

He hugged his daughter close for her warmth, as 
the oxen went slowly on. 

Andersen’s cabin was a square, log house, plas- 
tered with clay, standing on the brow of a low hill. 
He had built it with his own hands. A crumbling 
tobacco house, that had belonged to the Erskine 
Plantation in years gone by, stood behind it near 
the old abandoned graveyard of the Manor and a 
little farther up the hill was the barn, also of Ander- 
sen’s construction. 

Andersen got stiffly down from the cart without 
a word, and Jennie drove the oxen to the barn. 
She unyoked them in haste, threw them some ears 
of corn, and shutting the doors, sped as fast as her 
feet would carry her down the road past the house, 
retracing the path they had come with the cart. In 
ten minutes she reached the Manor, and panting 
for breath, opened the kitchen door. 

“Papa’s sick. Auntie, we got no tea; wont you 
ask Mrs. Erskine for a little?’’ she said to Ellen, 
the cook, who was putting a heavy log on the fire. 
The old black woman rose up with an angry glance. 

“Your papa,’’ she said, contemptuously; “Ole 


12 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

Colonel Erskine, he whip me when I was a chile, 
for calling my own black father ‘papa’ ; and now, a 
little nigger like you call a white man papa; go get 
your tea yourself!” 

Jennie walked through the kitchen to the entry, 
and stood at the open door of the room, where the 
family was at supper. 

Miss Gillingham was the first to catch sight of 
her. 

‘‘Do you want to see me, Jennie?” she asked. 

Jennie glanced at Mrs. Erskine, and then timidly 
told the teacher that her father was ill, and they 
wanted tea for him. 

Mrs. Erskine looked up angrily, but before she 
could speak Miss Gillingham rose from the table, 
and taking the child by the hand led her upstairs, 
where she produced from the bottom of her trunk, 
a package of tea that had never been opened since 
it came from Pennsylvania. 

‘‘Is your father very ill, Jennie?” she asked, 
as she poured out the tea on a piece of brown paper. 

There was no answer, and she saw that the child’s 
eyes were red with weeping. 

“Tell me about your father,” she whispered gently. 

‘‘Papa is always sick and miserable; everybody 
is always cross to him ; always, all the time ; and 
everybody is cross to me, except you and Auntie 
Emma, and she’s only an old nigger, always asleep ; 
I only happy with you at school,” and she kissed 
Miss Gillingham on the sleeve and was gone down- 
stairs like a flash. 


JAMES AND JENNIE ANDERSEN. 13 

James Andersen had stumbled into his cabin, and 
lain down on the bed with his boots and overcoat 
on. Old Auntie Emma covered him up with a thick 
quilt, put a log on the fire, and sat down. 

“I wonder where that child’s gone,” she said to 
herself. ‘‘She take a long time to feed the steers. 
I know, she gone to get some tea from Mrs. Ers- 
kine. Mr. Andersen want tea when he’s sick. He 
got no tea, and he got no money. He sold only 
three cord of wood for a long time. White man who 
live with nigger daughter, he no account to white 
man, or nigger neither.” 

Andersen looked up in a few minutes and asked 
where Jennie was. 

‘‘She’s feeding the steers,” Emma answered, 
then she began to doze. 

In a quarter of an hour Jennie came in. She 
told Emma to put the black pot on the fire and heat 
some water for her father’s feet; then she made a 
cup of tea for him. They put his feet in hot water, 
and he went to sleep. Emma climbed up the lad- 
der to the second story loft, where she slept. Jen- 
nie tucked the bed-clothes round her father, still 
clad in his boots and overcoat, and then went to 
sleep in the other bed in the room. 

Towards morning. when the chill had passed, and 
fever set in, there came a dream to James Ander- 
sen. It was a summer night at the White Sulphur 
Springs, long years ago, and young Andersen sat at 
the feet of Mary Pendleton. Beautiful, accom- 
plished, the only daughter of Col. Pendleton of 


14 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


Richmond, a man of influence and wealth, she was 
the queen of her day. James Andersen loved her 
madly, and followed her unchecked by any dis- 
couragement from her bright eyes. And now, sit- 
ting at her feet, looking up into her face, catching 
the odor of her breath, that mingled with the per- 
fume of the flowers in her lap, he had said: “I love 
you; I will die for you.” 

The man awoke. Dawn had not broken, and 
the sequel of the dream came back to his waking 
thoughts, as it had come to him many, many times 
before by day and by night — a heartless woman, 
who left him for a -better match, a dissipated, 
wasted manhood, the war, the carnage of the field 
of battle; then poverty, and black Lucy, Jennie’s 
mother, with the degradation of his later years. 


CHAPTER II. 

MISS GILLINGHAM AND THE REVEREND MR. JONES. 



FEW days after the scene in the negro school, 


ii. Miss Gillingham met the Rev. Mr. Jones in the 
road. He was driving the same pair of lean oxen 
before a two-wheeled cart, and as usual he sat on 
top of the load of wood. 

“Good-afternoon, Miss Gillingham,” he said, 
and the oxen stopped. “Hope you are getting 
along well with the school. How is my boy Abe 
doing?” 

“Pretty well, Mr. Jones; only he will go to sleep 
sometimes.” 

“Wake him up with a switch. Miss Gillingham; 
wake him up; he’ll learn; the spirit is willing, but 
the flesh is weak. I want my children to learn; I 
have five of them ; they must have a better chance 
than their father had. The two first boys are grown 
up now, and work down at Norfolk, They didn’t 
take much to learning, but I believe Abe has it in 
him; he’s named for President Lincoln.” 

“Do you know how to write, Mr. Jones,” the 
teacher asked. 

“Only tolerable well. Miss; niost of my preach- 
ing is ‘temporaneous.’ I study over the Word of 
the Lord pretty hard. ‘There was not a word of all 


15 


l6 NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 

that Moses commanded which Joshua read not’ ; I 
does a heap of thinkin’ on top of this cart, when I’m 
going through these lonely pines. This is where I 
compose most my sermons.” 

“Mr. Jones, have you known Mr. James Ander- 
sen a long time?’^ Miss Gillingham asked. 

“Know him, well, I think I did. My wife Han- 
nah and I, belonged to Mr. Andersen’s father befoie 
these blessed days of freedom. See here. Miss 
Gillingham, you see this long cut over my eyebrow? 
The overseer of Mr. Andersen’s father gave me 
that cut with his whip, when 1 was a grown man.” 

‘‘Had you done anything, Mr. Jones, to provoke 
his brutality?” the teacher asked in a low voice. 

‘‘Well, Miss, in those days I had not found the 
Lord, and I wasn’t a preacher. I only stole three 
pounds of tobacco, and exchanged with another 
man for a turkey, and then I had to lie about it. 
They found me out and whipped me.” 

Miss Gillingham seemed to forget herself for a 
minute, and then bade the preacher “Good-after- 
noon.” 

The Rev. Mr. Jones lived in a log house, at the 
edge of the pine woods that covered an old tobacco 
field close to the school-house. Passing that way 
next day, Miss Gillingham saw a fat negro woman 
scolding her pupil, Abraham Lincoln Jones, in the 
road. She knew it must be Hannah, the preach- 
er’s wife, and she nodded to her. 

“Hope you better pleased with my boy. Miss, 
than I am,” said Mrs. Jones, “1 can’t get him to 


M/SS GILLINGHAM AND THE PREACHER. 17 

cut no wood since he go to school, and he know his 
ole mudder’s handling de axe, and he go off to 
play.” 

Miss Gillingham sat down on a stump. Abraham 
Lincoln Jones walked off to the house, and carried 
away a small armful of wood, that his mother had 
cut. 

“Tell me about James Andersen, Mrs. Jones,” 
Miss Gillingham began. 

“I tell you about him. Miss,” replied Hannah, 
taking a big bite from a roll of coarse tobacco; 
“my husband tell me you cu’rus about him. I tell 
you all about the Andersens ; I belong to them and 
so did my husband. Mr. Andersen’s father was a 
doctor, a mighty smart man. He marry old Mrs. 
Erskine’s husband’s sister; they were mighty rich. 
Mr. Andersen’s father live on a big plantation in 
Amelia County. Mr. James Andersen was a wild 
young man. His father and mudder die, and he 
lose all his money at cards. Then he go away, and 
he never come back till the war; and then he go as 
a soldier in General Lee’s army. After the war he 
come back here, and he like Lucy Booth, a good 
girl, just as white as you. Miss. My mudder’s sister 
was her mudder, and our family descended from 
an African king, not a cannibal chief, like some 
colored people’s great ancestors, but a real king. 
Miss. Well, Mr. Andersen, he like Lucy. But 
you know, the law allow no marriage between whites 
and blacks ; and at last Mr. Andersen and Lucy, 
they go live together. 


1 8 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

“Well, we colored people will have nothing to do 
with such folks; besides, they will have nothing to 
do with us. Mr. Andersen’s relations and the white 
folks would never go near him, living with colored 
folks. Andersen grow shabby and move about 
slow. One day I meet Lucy going to the store, and 
I say ‘How de do” as I always do on de road, and 
she stop, which she never did before, and then I 
think ‘Pride will have a fall,’ and I stop, and she 
say: ‘Hannah, I want to speak to you; nobody 
ever speak to me this many a day, and I just bury 
my dear little boy, and no soul care for us; we 
alone, Hannah.’ Then I look up, and I see Mr. 
Andersen coming down de road, and he see me 
talking with Lucy, and he shake his fist and he 
shout ‘You black skunk,’ and I dodge into the woods 
and run away. 

“A month after that, I hear that Lucy was sick, 
but no one, white or colored, go near the house; 
and she die, and they say that Mr. Andersen bury 
her himself in the night, all alone, in the old grave- 
yard, just behind his house. No one ever speak 
her name to Mr. Andersen, and the white people 
whisper when he come near, and he grow paler and 
go about slower; and then he get ole Auntie 
Emma to work for him, and take care of his child 
Jennie, who go to your school.’’ 

It was not long before Miss Gillingham had 
mastered the situation of affairs in Lunenberg 
County. She found a proud, ignorant, ruling class 
of whites, poverty-stricken and utterly cast down 


MISS GILLINGHAM AND THE PREA CHER. 1 9 

by the desolation of the war. Outnumbering these, 
were the shiftless blacks, quite as industrious in poli- 
tics, and in prayer meetings as in the field, sending 
their children irregularly to school, more in imita- 
tion and rivalry of the whites, than to teach them 
reading, writing and spelling. This community 
was getting a scanty living, from a soil too poor 
to attract the immigration of thrifty people from 
abroad. It was indeed unfortunate that the teacher 
had chosen a spot, so plainly doomed to become a 
wilderness from the operation of natural causes, 
when there were so many localities in Virginia and 
in the South, marked by the hand of nature as the 
future home of an intelligent and enterprising 
people. 

But Miss Gillingham was a brave woman, she 
had agreed to teach the blacks of Lunenberg, 
and she never faltered in her determination. 
Not a word of complaint, or regret, did she utter 
in her letters to her father and mother. She 
bore her troubles in silence, and without friends, 
without sympathy, followed the narrow path of 
duty. 

For some time after Miss Gillingham became an 
inmate of the Manor, Mrs. Erskine preserved a 
strict seclusion, except during meal hours ; but at 
last, finding that the white teacher of the negro 
school had no desire to obtrude herself, and even 
seemed anxious to be alone in her room, she 
yielded to the temptation of Miss Gillingham’s 
pleasant manners, and quiet conversation, and in- 


20 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


sisted on seeing her in the sitting-room sometimes 
in the evening. 

The sitting-room contained all the furniture in 
the Manor, that had escaped the despoiling hand of 
war. There was always a wood fire on the hearth, 
and the bare floor, that had been trodden by so many 
generations, was white as silver. A few old-fash- 
ioned chairs were scattered here and there. On the 
walls was a collection of family portraits of fair 
merit; and the table was ornamented with a Scott’s 
Family Bible and Butler’s Sermons. 

Here it had long been Mrs. Erskine’s custom to 
pass the evenings alone, her chair drawn up before 
the hearth. 

How pleasant it is for the aged to watch the 
embers of a smouldering fire, when they kindle 
happy memories of the past, and hopes of the 
future for loved ones. But this poor old woman 
with her sensitive face in the gentle light of the 
hearth, what was she thinking of? Her memories 
of the past began with the war. The recollections 
of her uneventful life before that time, were blurred 
and lost by her sufferings then. 

The Rebellion in the South, the disappearance of 
Col. Erskine in battle, these were her early past ; 
and then came the long roll of sorrow, when the 
Manor was despoiled by robbers, who hung on 
the rear and flank of both armies, in the guise of 
soldiers. Piece by piece everything of value dis- 
appeared, till at last even the wedding ring was 


A//SS GILLINGHAM AND THE FEE A GHEE. 21 

wrenched from her finger. Then followed long, 
long years of poverty and loneliness. 

And what were her hopes ? Her sons, what were 
they doing ? — men of almost middle age ; one a car- 
driver, and the other keeping a negro store — the 
sons of a Virginia gentleman. Her boys had been 
good boys. Why should they sink ? She could 
not see the reason for it all. 

It was the fall of slavery, she often said bitterly to 
herself. Her ancestors had known nothing else 
than slavery for the blacks, and were they not better 
men and better women as slaves? But why had 
her boys ceased to be gentlemen? She let it 
pass. She could not reason about it, it was the 
hand of God. Poor old woman ! She had been 
a good Christian. Bitter as she was towards the 
negroes, in the presence of her little circum- 
scribed world, yet she had forgiven even those 
among them, whom she thought were her enemies, 
had prayed for them, in her room alone bowed 
before the fire, thinking of her boys. “My stroke 
is heavier than my groaning.” “And where is now 
my hope ? As for my hope, who shall see it ? ” 


CHAPTER III. 

THE NEGRO CHURCH. 

'^PHE draught was wailing through the cracks in 
1 the old windows, while the wood burned brightly 
on the black hearth. Miss Gillingham was spend- 
ing the evening in Mrs. Erskine’s sitting-room. 
The teacher was describing a corn-husking bee in 
Pennsylvania in the days before the patent corn 
husker came into use, and the old lady had just said 
that she would like to see how people lived in the 
North, for she had never been beyond Richmond; 
The door opened — they never knock in Virginia — 
and a stout, middle-aged man, with black eyes, 
entered. Miss Gillingham had known him for some 
time as the only Northerner besides herself in the 
neighborhood. 

Mr. Hood came from New Jersey to Virginia with 
a little money in search of low priced land, and he 
found it in Lunenberg. Disappointed in the farm 
he had bought, he held on where he was only be- 
cause he could find no one to buy him out. The 
scanty living afforded by the soil, drove him to mak- 
ing sharp bargains with the negroes in the sale of 
old horses and stunted oxen. Meanwhile, he was a 
power in the neighborhood. He led the negroes in 
politics, and was a member of the Legislature. Any- 
where else his abilities would have made him rich. 


22 


THE NEGRO CHURCH. 


23 


“Good-evening,” Mr. Hood said, as he entered. 
“I walked over to tell Miss Gillingham that the 
Rev. Mr. Jones and I would pay a visit to the 
school to-morrow, to see how the scholars are get- 
ting along. ’ ’ Mr. Hood and Mr. Jones were School 
Commissioners. 

Mrs. Erskine rose and looked at Mr. Hood with- 
out speaking. To have a teacher of the negroes in 
her parlor was bad enough, though she soon forgot 
it with Miss Gillingham, but she would not tolerate 
the Leader of the negroes there. This was the first 
time Mr. Hood had ever crossed her front door 
threshold. 

“Sit down, Mrs. Erskine, sit down,” Mr. Hood 
said. “I hear your grandson, Harry, wants some- 
thing to do, and I think I’ll offer him a place at six 
dollars a month, to take;, care of my cattle. ‘ You 
can’t trust the blacks. Well, you are not able to 
answer for him, I suppose. I’ll see his father at 
the store to-morrow. What’ll you sell that young 
cow for, that I saw old Sally driving past my house 
this morning?” 

No answer from Mrs. Erskine. 

Mr. Hood took up his hat and went out; he 
slammed the door behind him, and buttoned his 
overcoat hard across his breast. “Blast that 
woman!” he said. “She always insults me when- 
ever I meet her. Well, Hood, what difference 
does it make? She’s only an old granny and 
haven’t you got the power here, in this God-forsaken 
place? Who can hold a candle to you? Don’t the 


24 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

niggers do pretty much as you tell ’em, and aint the 
niggers the people here, and aint you King?” 

He followed the path that led to his house a mile 
and a half away. As he ascended the bank of the 
creek, a woman’s voice, clear and strong, rose 
through the night far up the path, chanting a hymn. 
Nearer and nearer it came. 

“There’s that woman, Sarah,” Hood thought. 
“I’ll wake her up about the oxen her husband owes 
me for.” 

As the singer came within call. Hood cried out, 
“Good-evening, Sarah.” • 

“ Who’s dar,” answered Sarah, drawing herself 
back to run. 

Mr. Hood,” he called out; “I want to know 
when your husband’s going to pay me the forty- 
five dollars for the oxen? He was to pay me five 
dollars every two months, and now the third pay- 
ment has been due a long time.” 

“Oh, Mr. Hood, he soon pay you!” answered 
Sarah, and she passed him quickly and said to herself, 
before she began to sing again, “Bennie say the oxen 
not worth ten dollars and that Hood cheat him 
when he agree to pay forty-five dollars ; but wait 
till ’lection time, and then he make Hood take less.” 

Just before Hood reached his door he stopped 
and spoke aloud, “Well, but what’s the good in being 
king in such a place? I can’t save a cent, and I 
haven’t the respect of the white people. The old 
woman despises me, and every white man despises 
me. I wonder why they don’t despise Miss Gilling- 


THE NEGRO CHURCH. 25 

ham? She’s a friend of the niggers too. I won- 
der why it is?” 

The Rev. Mr. Jones gazed over his spectacles on 
his flock the next Sunday, from a high platform in 
the new frame chapel, that seated two hundred people 
comfortably. It was a prosperous congregation. 
Jennie Andersen was there beside Auntie Emma, 
who successfully fought the demon of the flesh in 
the shape of sleep, through the prayers, but suc- 
cumbed when the reading of the Bible began. Mr. 
Jones gave them a long sermon on Faith, and then 
said “Brethren and Sisters, I congratulate you on 
the success of our school teacher. In company 
with another gentleman, I paid a visit to our school 
last week and witnessed the successful efforts of 
Miss Gillingham in the cause of education. 

“My Brethren, education is the pathway along- 
side the high-way of religion. It bears the same 
relation to religion that the underbridged Webster’s 
Dictionary bears to the Bible. One explains the 
other. Without education, how can we fight the 
battles of the Lord? How can we battle with such 
traitors to the cause of the colored people, as Gen- 
eral Mahone? That man who rose to power by 
pretending to be the friend of the colored man; but 
the minute he get his power he snap his finger and 
say the colored man’s time has not yet come; he 
can wait. 

“My friends. General Mahone soar up aloft, high, 
like a great eagle, and the colored people admire 
him and watch him, but when he come down and 


26 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


they go near him, they find he is nothing but a 
turkey buzzard.” 

While Jennie and Auntie Emma were listening 
to the preaching of Mr. Jones, Miss Gillingham sat 
in the Erskine pew in the Presbyterian church. 
Services were held in the white church on the morn- 
ing of every fourth Sunday of the month only. The 
minister, the Rev. Edward Richards, a nephew of 
Mrs. Erskine, had four churches within a circuit of 
thirty miles. The condition of his congregation 
presented a sad contrast with the prosperity of Mr. 
Jones’s flock. The old building was tumbling to 
pieces for want of repair and paint, and it was sel- 
dom that more than twenty souls gathered there to 
worship. On that Sunday, Miss Gillingham and 
Mrs. Erskine were the first to arrive. They found 
John Erskine on his knees before a wood-stove, 
kindling the fire. 

“Well,” he said, greeting them, “it will be warm 
enough for Sunday school in the afternoon, no 
matter if it is cold this morning.” 

The wind rattled the window panes, and sighed 
through the old oaks round the church, while the 
people, standing close to the stove, waited for the 
minister. The congregation arrived by twos and 
threes. Some of the people walked a distance of 
five or six miles; some came on horseback, and 
others rode in old wagons, that rattled as if they 
would fall to pieces with every jolt. 

At length the minister drove up, twenty minutes 
late, and shook hands with every one. After him 


THE NEGRO CHURCH. 


27 


came James Andersen, walking alone. The con- 
gregation of sixteen or seventeen people scattered 
themselves among the high-backed pews, and service 
was begun. Looking back the teacher saw James 
Andersen in his accustomed place in the gallery, 
alone, removed from every one. The Rev. Mr. 
Richards was cold and ill-at-ease, and the worship 
and sermon were as dreary as the oM chapel. 

Miss Gillingham always felt as if she would be 
happier on Sunday in the negro church, where at 
least, were hope and life. 

There was a change at the Manor. Jennie 
Andersen had come to live with Miss Gillingham. 
James Andersen readily consented to the teacher’s 
request, that his daughter should spend six days in 
the week with her at the Erskine Manor. When 
Jennie had left him he dismissed Auntie Emma, 
and during the week cooked his meals himself. 
On Sundays Jennie came home, and proudly showed 
her father the result of the teacher’s lessons in 
cooking. 

Mrs. Erskine gave Jennie a room next to Miss 
Gillingham. She ate in the kitchen with old Ellen, 
and did part of the work. 

The first Sunday after Jennie came to the Manor, 
the teacher took her to the white church. James 
Andersen saw them from his solitary seat in the loft, 
but said not a word about it afterwards to the 
teacher, or to his child. 

On Sundays when services were not held, Miss 
Gillingham read the Bible to Jennie at home. 


28 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


Now Jennie had left the negro church. Her 
absence from Auntie Emma’s side was noticed at 
once, and it crept about that she was living with 
Miss Gillingham. Many necks were craned, many 
glances were directed, towards the vacant place. 
There was much whispering among the colored 
people after service, for a Sunday or two, but it all 
passed away in a little while with a remark by the 
Rev. Mr. Jones to the teacher; 

“Miss Gillingham, I see you take Jennie to your 
church. Well, I suppose the Lord is in both places. 
But how does Mr. Andersen like having Jennie 
among the white folks?’’ 

It is a commonplace conviction with all of us, 
that the sum of the forces of many human lives 
asserts itself with as much regularity and steadiness, 
through long periods, as the water flows from the 
dam and turns the mill-wheel. But once in a long 
time, to everybody’s surprise, there comes a great 
freshet, and the current bursts the mill-dam and 
sweeps everything before it. 

In Lunenberg-County, Miss Gillingham found her- 
self in the presence of a freshet of this kind in 
human affairs. All former relations between blacks 
and whites, had been swept away by the abolition of 
slavery. The Reverend Mr. Jones, from his pulpit, 
impressed on his congregation the fact, that the first 
man into whose nostrils the Lord God breathed the 
breath of life, was as surely the ancestor of the 
negro as he was of the white man. While the law 
told the negro, that all men were equal, and gave 


THE NEGRO CHURCH 29 

him the right to vote and hold offic3, just as it did 
his former white master. 

Under the genealogical teachings of the Rev- 
erend Mr. Jones, and the substantial right to vote 
and hold office, given the negro by law, what won- 
der was it, that the claim of Mr. Jones’s flock to 
social equality- with the whites grew swiftly, and 
asserted itself beyond all bounds. 

The little woman with a shapely head saw there 
before her eyes, and comprehended perfectly, the 
struggle that is taking place all over the world, 
between high and low, between the few and 
the many, for Caesar’s right to rule. Did she ever 
turn to the Bible and to Darwin, and worry about 
the question of the unity of origin of blacks and 
whites? No. The blacks were men and women, 
— that was plain enough. Were they not endued 
with exactly the same follies and longings that 
belonged to their former masters? Did a black 
man show any less fondness for power over his fel- 
lows, than his white brother? 

Pomp of life, the multitudes of the world, to fill 
up a great scene of struggling ambition, were lack- 
ing in Lunenberg; but no philosopher ever enjoyed 
a better view of man, and of his longings on this 
earth, than did the little teacher in that obscure 
negro county in Virginia. 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE HAWK AND THE VICTIM. 

O NE afternoon, the Rev. Mr. Jones walked 
solemnly down the single street of Lunenberg, 
with a small basket of eggs on his arm. Both the 
white and the negro schools, had dismissed their 
pupils, who filled the sidewalk, laughing and play- 
ing jokes on each other. 

Miss Gillingham was locking the school-house 
door. The preacher joined her with the usual sweep 
of his high hat, and a request that he might walk 
with her a little way towards home. Just before 
them strolled Jennie Andersen and Harry Erskine; 
she, swinging her books carelessly to and fro, as they 
dangled at the end of a piece of rope, and he look- 
ing straight ahead, as if he did not know what to do 
or say. Mr. Jones regarded them intently and said: 

“Fine looking young man and woman, Miss Gil- 
lingham?” Then a pause. “Can you tell me which 
is the finest looking, and is there any reason why 
Harry Erskine should be any better than Jennie 
Andersen, because they call her black, and him 
white? Can you tell me that, Miss Gillingham?” 
and Mr. Jones turned round and looked the teacher 
squarely in the face. 

Miss Gillingham returned his gaze with a kind 


30 


THE HAWK AND THE VICTIM. 3 1 

expression and replied quietly, “Mr. Jones, I came 
here to teach the colored children ; I try to be faith- 
ful to them and to my task, ^nd I cannot discuss 
• the question you ask, without weakening my power 
to be of service. ’ ’ 

The preacher nodded slowly twice, and withdrew 
his gaze with a humble sigh. 

“You tell the truth. Miss Gillingham ; you silent, 
but you help the colored children ; you couldn’t do 
that if you all the time in a muss and a quarrel. 
Now everybody white and black respect you. 
You not like Mr. Hood; every one fear him, black 
and white. I’m sure you like us although you are 
white.” — This with a touch of scorn. 

Then, after thinking, he began again in a deeper 
voice : 

“But I like to know why you like to teach the 
colored people; why you like them? Fifteen dol- 
lars a month without board is only about what a 
colored man get in the field, when he don’t work on 
shares?” 

The teacher made no reply, and kept her eyes fixed 
steadily on Harry Erskine and Jennie, who still 
walked before them. They were on the road now, 
with the bare fields on one side and a wood on the 
other. Harry Erskine was laughing, and had taken 
hold of the rope that bound Jennie’s books. Just 
then a frightened quail flew out of the woods across 
the path ; close behind it darted a powerful hawk. 
So eager was the hawk in pursuit of its prey, that 
it did not see the group of people, and its swift 


32 


NOT OF HER FATHER ’5 RACE. 


wings nearly smote the teacher’s face, as it swept by. 
The quail sought refuge beneath a bush, almost at 
the feet of Jennie Andersen; the hawk following 
closely, fell on its victim and brained it with a 
single stroke of its sharp bill. Then startled by 
the sight of the people, the bird rose with a cry 
from its bloody beak, and sailed away, leaving the 
prey dead on the ground. Harry turned round, 
picked up the mutilated quail and threw it at the 
preacher, who put it in his basket with the eggs, 
saying with a laugh, “The Lord send quail to a 
colored preacher as well as to the children of 
Israel.” 

“Is there such a thing as an omen?” Miss Gilling- 
ham thought, as she saw Harry’s gaze fixed on Jen- 
nie as they turned to go. 


CHAPTER V. 


A RACE BATTLE AND LOST SISTER SALLIE. 

I T was a Saturday holiday. Jennie had helped in 
the kitchen in the morning, and in the afternoon 
she was sent to- the store, two miles away, to fetch 
the groceries for Mrs. Erskine. John Erskine was 
behind the counter, and after asking Jennie how his 
mother and Miss Gillingham were, he weighed out 
the sugar and packed the basket. While he was at 
work his son Harry came in. The color deepened 
in the young man’s face, and his blue eyes grew 
brighter when he saw Jennie. 

“Harry,’” his father called out from the back of 
the store, “it’s a shame to make the girl carry this 
big basket ; you go out and tell Abe to hitch up the 
horse and take her home.” 

Abe was no other than Jennie’s school-mate, 
Abraham Lincoln Jones, who had been hired by Mr. 
Erskine to work for him after school hours. Harry 
went out, but did not return, and in a quarter of an 
hour Abe came in, and told Mr. Erskine that the 
horse and wagon were ready. 

“Where’s Mr. Harry?” John Erskine asked. 

“He told me to get the horse and carry Jennie 
to the Manor, and then he went on up the road. 
He told me to tell you he’s gone to see Col. Temple 


33 


34 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


about the fox chase next Saturday. As he said 
this, Abe glanced at Jennie. 

Mr. Erskine carried the basket out, put it in the 
wagon and told Jennie to jump in. After they had 
started, Abe spoke up : 

“Jennie, you know Harry lie about goin’ to see 
Col. Temple. I think he go out here on the road to 
meet the wagon and ride to the Manor alongside 
you. You know his father not let him drive with 
you.” 

Jennie colored and laughed. 

“Why you laugh?” answered Abe. “I know 
very well that Harry like you, and goin’ to meet you 
now. He often walk with you after school, and if 
your father knew it he give you a whippin’.” 

Jennie grew red in the face and cried out, “You 
black fool; I don’t care a snap for what you say, 
or for Harry Erskine, neither. 

“There he is now,” said Abe, quietly. 

As he spoke Jennie saw Harry in the road waiting 
for the wagon. 

When they drove up, Harry raised his hand in 
command for them to stop, and then got in, taking 
the seat beside Jennie that Abe silently vacated. 

Abe sat down in the bottom of the wagon, with his 
knees drawn up to his chin, the picture of woe. 

Jennie said not a word at first. Flattered by the 
desire of Harry Erskine to ride with her, she was 
indignant that Abe thought she had any knowledge 
of Harry’s lie, and she wished Abe to know that she 
was innocent. At last she spoke: 


A RACE BATTLE AND SALLIE. 35 

“Harry Erskine, why did you say you were going 
to see Colonel Temple, and then come to ride with 
me to the Manor?” 

“Who told you I was going to see Col. Temple?” 
answered Harry, looking back at Abe in the bottom 
of the wagon. Abe did not look up. 

“Tell me, you Abe, did you tell any tales about 
me?” and Harry took the reins in his left hand 
and the switch in his right, and threw his right leg 
threateningly over the seat. 

Abe looked up, but before he could speak, Jen- 
nie seized the reins and cried, “Harry Erskine, I 
wont ride with you; you let me out;” and in a 
second she had leaped from the moving wagon, and 
was on the ground. 

Harry, laughing, stopped the horse. 

“Come, Jennie, get in; I was only frightening 
Abe.” 

“I’ll get in if you’ll behave like a gentleman,” 
said Jennie, and she climbed back over the front 
wheel. 

They drove on and were mounting the bank of 
the creek, when Jennie called out, “Look at Sister 
Sallie, Abe, she has run away from home again.” 

Sitting at the side of the road was Abe’s half- 
witted Sister Sallie. Poor, witless girl, she never 
talked, but sat silent, till at intervals she would cry 
out “Sister Sallie”; “I’m sister Sallie going home,” 
with a long, wild laugh. The negroes had a rever- 
ence for her. Every one knew Sister Sallie, far and 
wide ; she was the preacher’s youngest child. They 


36 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

kept her close at home. She slept in a little room 
partitioned off, in the second story of the cabin, 
that they called “Sister Sallie’s room.” Hannah 
always gave her the best piece of corn bread in the 
baking. Her father said, “Sallie is a good girl; 
she’ll get her heart some day;” but Hannah 
shook her head and whispered “I don’t know what 
will become of the poor child when I am dead.” 

Within a year Sallie had shown a disposition 
to wander off alone; the desire possessed her, 
and then disappeared for a time, to return again. 
Her mother watched her closely. Twice she had 
escaped into the woods. The neighbors all sought 
her through the fields and pines till she was found, 
which was always in some lonely place near the 
water — with a look of surprise in her great eyes, 
while she cried out “Sister Sallie’s going home.” 

When Jennie called out “Look at Sister Sallie,” 
Harry stopped the horse and Abe jumped out with- 
out a word, and caught his sister by the hand. Her 
feet and scanty dress were wet ; evidently she had 
been wandering along the creek. Jenniesaid, “It’s 
lucky we found her, Abe; she was just going olf.” 

The vehicle that Harry was driving was a plain 
box wagon, with a single board across the front for 
a seat, which was barely long enough for two per- 
sons. While Harry stood in the road, Jennie got 
up from the seat and made Sister Sallie take her 
place, then she sat down in the bottom of the wagon 
with Abe. Harry watched her do this and then 
climbed in. Checking the horse he said, “Sister 


A RACE BATTLE AND SALLJE. 37 

Sallie has got to sit in the bottom of the wagon; you 
come up here, Jennie.” 

‘‘No, I wont,” answered Jennie; ‘‘Sister Sallie 
must sit there; I’ll sit here with Abe.” 

Harry rose up in a rage; he was afraid of Jennie, 
and he poured all the vials of his wrath on Abe. 

‘‘You nigger, you make all this trouble,” he 
cried, and he beat him across the face with his 
heavy horse switch ; beat him to the ground, out of 
the wagon, and then was on him with his fists. Abe 
fought back manfully. Jennie jumped out, and 
caught Harry by the coat and cried aloud. 

The noise of . the fighters and Jennie’s screams 
echoed through the pines, but high over it all rose 
the cry of the half-witted girl, with great staring 
eyes, as she sat on the seat, ‘‘Sister Sallie’s going 
home! Sister Sallie’s going home!” • Then she 
stopped crying and began to laugh, ‘‘ha! ha! ha!” 
This brought them to their senses and Harry and 
Abe ceased fighting. They were all in a sorry, 
plight. Harry’s and Abe’s faces were bloody and 
scratched; their clothes torn, and poor Jennie’s 
eyes were red with weeping. She was the first to 
speak. 

‘‘Abe, get my basket and bring Sister Sallie; 
we’ll walk,” and she parted from Harry without a 
word. Abe carried the heavy basket on his arm 
and led Sister Sallie by the hand. 

That night the rain fell in torrents. Towards 
morning Jennie was awakened by the rolling of 
thunder. Just at dawn she felt a heavy hand on 


38 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE, 


her head — Old Ellen, the cook, was standing over 
her. 

“Abe want you in the kitchen, right away,” whis- 
pered Ellen. 

Jennie dressed hastily and hurried down stairs. 
Abe was standing before the fire, drying his clothes. 

“Sister Sallie’s gone again,” he said; “I come 
to tell you; we missed her just now.” 

It did not take them long to reach the preacher’s 
cabin, and there they found Hannah crying in the 
midst of a dozen neighbors. Mr. Jones had gone 
to tell Mr. Hood what had happened, who shortly 
afterwards arrived on horseback, with the preacher 
walking behind him. Mr. Hood questioned Han- 
nah ; she cried and chewed tobacco, while she told 
her story. She said they had watched Sister Sallie 
all the afternoon, because they felt sure, when Abe 
and Jennie brought her home, that the wandering 
impulse controlled her. 

At eight o’clock, when the family all went to sleep, 
Sallie was shut up in her little room, in the second 
story of the cabin, with a log of pine wood against 
the closed door. The thunder woke Hannah just 
before dawn. Climbing up the ladder, to make 
sure the child was safe, she saw the log on the floor 
and the door wide open. The little sun-bonnet 
and the old red shawl were not on their accustomed 
peg. Sister Sallie was gone. She had passed out 
of the unfastened cabin door into the night. 

Mr. Hood asked Hannah how long it was, since 
Sister Sallie had wandered before, and Hannah 


A RACE BARTLE AND SALLIE. 


39 


answered “Long time ago.” Jennie told him, it 
was about eight months, and they found Sallie 
after two days’ search, nearly starved, in the pines 
six mile from home. 

Hood said, “Mr. Jones, when you find her this 
time, we must send her to the doctor in Rich- 
mond,” and then he thought to himself, “Confound 
her, I wish the grave-digger had her now; election 
time is near, and I suppose I’ve got to let my plowing 
go, till the little nigger is found. ’ ’ Then he mounted 
his horse and said, “Now all of you get something 
to eat, and I’ll ride down to the store and bring back 
some more neighbors to help us. ” 

Hood rode to Lunenberg. He took a drink of 
beer, and ate some crackers at John Erskine’s store, 
telling him the story of Sister Sallie’s escape. Soon 
the whole neighborhood had heard it and every 
negro — man, woman, and child, assembled to follow 
Mr. Hood. They were wild with excitement ; the 
grown men and women leaving work and home, 
without another thought, than to join in the search 
for the wandering child. 

Harry Erskine galloped up to Mr. Hood, mounted 
on his father’s horse, and told him with a laugh, that 
he would join the hunt. “I think you will find 
Sallie along the creek,” he said. “She likes to 
wander near the water.” 

Led by Mr. Hood and Harry Erskine, the negroes 
marched to the preacher’s cabin, where the crowd 
had increased four-fold,. 

And now there was a great noise and chattering of 


40 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE: 


two hundred people, nearly every one of whom was 
armed with a long stick. They all gathered in little 
knots round the cabin, talking, laughing, crying 
and gesticulating, like so many mad men. It was a 
holiday for them. Hannah sat on the steps, her 
son Abe beside her, a red cotton handkerchief in 
her hand, with which she wiped her streaming eyes. 
The preacher carried the air of a martyr with him, 
as he listened to all, and answered wild questions 
about the lost child. 

At length Hood mounted his horse and cried 
in a loud voice, “I want you to keep quiet and 
stand in a circle, then when I say ‘go,’ strike out in 
all directions over the country, and hunt for Sister 
Sallie till you find her. Remember that she is likely 
to be near the water, but still you must search 
through the pines. She wore shoes. The ground 
is soft after the rain, look for her tracks.” 

The circle was quickly formed, with discordant 
cries and a great waving of sticks and hats. Hood 
and Harry Erskine in the center. With the signal, 
the ndgroes broke like a startled drove of wild 
horses and scattered in all directions, running at 
full speed. Soon they were out of sight. As they 
separated farther and farther from each other, 
their halloos echoed through the tall pines. More 
distant and fainter came the sounds, and still they 
rose again. Fainter and fainter they fell; then 
they were lost. All were gone. The cabin was 
still. Hannah wept on the step alone. 

Jennie and Abe kept together. She told him 


A RACE BATTLE AND SALL/E. 4i 

they had better find the creek and look for Sister 
Sallie’s tracks along the bank. They soon reached 
the stream, which was deep and narrow, its sides 
covered with thick alder. Jennie stopped to pin 
up her dress under a huge burning bush, bright 
with berries. 

“Abe,” she said, “did you bring any bread with 
you ? ’ ’ 

“Yes,” replied Abe, as he clutched the pocket 
of his ragged coat, “I knew you want something to 
eat.” 

Jennie smiled. 

“I believe if any one find Sallie, you can,” Abe 
added. 

The country for many miles round the Manor 
was flat, with the exception of a single line of low 
hills, running north and south along the creek. 
The plain was scored by two small streams or 
branches, that foupd their way, with many wind- 
ings, to the James River. Pines were growing every 
where, and, except from the vantage point of the hills, 
it was impossible to gain an extended view. 

Anyone who has spent much time in the woods 
knows that in the search for a lost companion, one 
view and a halloo from a mountain cliff, is worth 
hours of toil on the plain. It was on a wooded and 
marshy plain that Jennie and Abe were searching for 
Sister Sallie, the stream cut them off from the hills. 

Under the dark and dismal pines, the boy and 
girl patiently groped their way down the creek. 
She, as close to the bank as the thick bushes would 


42 


NOT OF HEH FATHER'S RACE. 


permit, and he, fifty pac-es away, pursuing a parallel 
course. Frequent were their calls at first, “You 
there, Jennie?” and “Where are you, Abe?” But 
soon they grew silent, with their thoughts for com- 
panions, and kept track of each other by the rustling 
of the branches. 

Many a mile they had left behind them by noon, 
when Abe stopped beside a fallen tree, where the 
clear sunlight pierced the darkness. Jennie joined 
him, and they sat on the barkless trunk, and ate 
their corn bread. 

“Do you know where we are?” Jennie asked. 

“We way down the creek, below the Manor, near 
the river. The road about a mile up that way,” 
Abe said, pointing with his big left hand. 

Now they were tramping again, and soon the 
woods had changed ; the trees were small and scat- 
tered. The ground had been more recently culti- 
vated, and they passed several deserted cabins on 
the bank of the stream. 

“Hark,’.’ said Jennie, stopping, and they heard a 
faint “halloo” far away behind them — then another. 

Abe almost burst his lungs as he replied, with 
his face in the direction of the sound. 

“Do you think they have found her?” Jennie 
asked. 

Abe did not answer, he was listening. Just then 
Jennie’s quick eye caught something white, lying on 
the ground in the open space before them; she 
clutched Abe’s arm.as he was about to call again. 
His eyes followed hers. There, lying on the grass. 


A RACE BATTLE AND S A LL/E. 


43 


was Sister Sallie’s sun-bonnet. Awed by the sud- 
den discovery they approached it slowly, and Abe 
pointed silently to the track of the wandering girl. 

Jennie picked up the bonnet. Then the “halloo” 
sounded again much nearer. Abe stopped to reply, 
and Jennie said, “It is Mr. Hood; you stay here 
and call for help, while I follow the track,” and 
she darted on. With head bent and eyes fixed 
before her, she sped away, Abe’s halloos ringing in 
her ears. 

The grass was short ; it was easy to see the dis- 
placement of the blades, with here and there a 
crushed violet, or arbutus, that had not yet lifted 
its head, after the pressure of Sister Sallie’s foot. 
Where the ground was bare, the disturbed stones 
and gravel told the tale to Jennie’s keen eyes. 

Ever and anon poor Sallie’s feet had dug holes in 
the soft ant-hills, as she stumbled over them. She 
evidently had walked there in the darkness the night 
before, and Jennie thought how far away she must 
be by this time. It seemed beyond hope that she 
should catch up with the wandering child, before 
the failing day had concealed the tracks. 

There! Jennie had a glimpse of something in the 
grass before her. Her heart beat violently, and 
she looked back wishing Abe were there. She no 
longer heard his cries. Then her sense of loneli- 
ness gave her courage and she advanced — it was 
Sister Sallie’s shawl — but it moved. She started 
in terror; then she saw on the corner of the shawl, 
coiled up with head erect, an angry black snake. 


44 


NO T OP her pa THER 'S RA CE. 


The movement of the shawl explained, the snake 
had no terrors for her. She knew the warmth of 
the wool would attract a serpent in the spring, and 
picking up the shawl, she shook the creature out, 
and pressed onward through the gloom. 

The ground had changed. Jennie was under the 
pines again. Sister Sallie’s steps were plain. 
Here she had stumbled over a decayed log, and 
there, walked through a pool of stagnant water in 
the darkness. On and on the girl trod swiftly, with- 
out a thought of day or night or herself, only of Sis- 
ter Sallie’s tracks. It was darkening. The slant 
sun could not penetrate the branches. The track 
had led close to the creek, and Jennie followed it 
with difficulty in the growing darkness. Sister Sal- 
lie had stopped, and there were confused marks of 
many footsteps in the mud. At last the track led off 
at right angles. A few steps in that direction, and 
the setting sun was in Jennie’s face, streaming 
through the thin branches on the river’s bank. A 
little farther, and she was at the river’s edge on her 
knees, in the full glare of day, peering into the 
water. Across the stream, opposite the mouth of 
the creek that flowed into the river, there grew a 
ripple on the surface. It approached the bank. 
Then the shouts of Abe and Harry Erskine rose 
from far behind. Still Jennie knelt, her eyes star- 
ing into the depths before her, where the sun’s rays 
revealed poor little Sister Sallie’s last tracks, as 
the footprints led down, down, down, till they were 
lost in the sluggish depths of the James River. 


CHAPTER VI. 

A MAN AND A DOG. 

M rs. ERSKINE and Miss Gillingham sat to- 
gether before the fire. The teacher’s face 
wore a troubled look ; Jennie had not returned. The 
negro school was without a single scholar that day, 
every child had disappeared in the search for Sister 
Sallie. There was a shout outside. Miss Gilling- 
ham hurried to the door, and met Harry Erskine 
and Mr. Hood riding up. Jennie rode behind 
Harry, and Abe walked beside Mr. Hood’s horse. 

As Jennie got down, Miss Gillingham said, “Mr. 
Hood, I think you should have brought Jennie 
home on your horse, and not put her behind Harry. 

‘T couldn’t do it. Miss,” he answered, “my 
horse will not carry two. The girl is completely 
worn out; we had to put her behind Harry Erskine 
to get her home.’’ 

“It would have been better if you could have 
walked in those wet clothes, Jennie,’ ’ Miss Gilling- 
ham said; “I am afraid you will be ill.’’ And the 
child did look ill. She coughed and had a flushed 
face. Her clothing was torn ; her hands and face 
were bleeding. The teacher was shocked at her 
pupil’s appearance in the fire-light, and put her to 
bed without delay, listening to her story. 


45 


46 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

Jennie awoke the next day with a high fever. 
Abe walked twenty miles in the morning with a 
message from Miss Gillingham to the doctor. The 
doctor was away, but the next morning he rode up 
to the Manor. “Poor Jennie has lung fever, and 
may die,” he said. Miss Gillingham returned 
from school while the doctor stood before the door 
rummaging for medicine in his saddle-bags. 

Jennie Andersen was very ill. For two weeks 
she lay between life and death. Abe came to the 
Manor every morning and helped Auntie Emma 
nurse her while Miss Gillingham was teaching, and 
the rest of the day and night the teacher was the 
nurse. James Andersen came at night to learn how 
his daughter was, and Harry Erskine often rode 
over from the store, and was sent to Richmond for 
medicine. Mr. Jones prayed for Jennie every 
Sunday in the negro church, and then the congre- 
gation wept for her, and for Sister Sallie. 

At the end of two weeks, Jennie began to mend. 
Propped up in bed one morning she said, “Miss 
Gillingham, I suppose Sister Sallie is way down the 
River in the sea now.” 

In three weeks Jennie was as bright and beauti- 
ful as ever. 

One afternoon Jennie was in the kitchen alone 
while old Ellen the cook was away milking. Harry 
Erskine came by with a gun on his shoulder and a 
dog at his heels. He saw Jennie through the open 
door and came in. 

“Well, Jennie,” he said, with a glance of admira- 


A MAN AND A DOG. 


47 


tion, “I’m glad you are well again; I brought you 
home that night, you know.” 

Looking round to see that no one was near, he 
sat down. 

‘‘I will leave these quail for the teacher,” he 
said, drawing the birds out of his pocket. Then 
he caught Jennie round the.waist and tried to kiss 
her. 

She grew red with anger, and putting forth her 
utmost strength to escape, she dealt him a violent 
blow in the face with her clenched hand. 

“Harry Erskine,” she cried, “don’t you dare 
ever to speak to me again.” 

Harry drew back looking as if he would shoot 
her. Then he laughed derisively, picked up his gun 
and went out the door, saying to himself, “You’d 
rather be kissed by that nigger Abe,, wouldn’t you? 
I’d like to kill him.” 

Before she went to bed that night, Jennie had 
told Miss Gillingham. 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE GREAT THOMSEN ESTATE, OF ENGLAND. 

M rs. ERSKINE had been very much preoccu- 
pied of late. Evidently something out of the 
usual course of events was about to happen. For 
this reason the teacher was not surprised one even- 
ing, when the old lady bade her draw her chair close, 
and said she had a secret that woiild soon become 
public. 

“You’ve heard of the great Thomsen estate that 
is lying unclaimed in the Bank of England. This 
estate was left by William Thomsen, of Acton, who 
died a hundred years ago. They never have been 
able to find his heirs. Would you believe it, if I 
told you that the missing heirs are in Virginia, and 
that I am one of them?” 

Miss Gillingham smiled gravely. 

“Yes, it is a fact,” Mrs. Erskine continued. 
“Long before the war, when I was young. Col. 
Erskine often spoke of my great-grandfather, John 
Thomsen, who was a descendant of the celebrated 
millionaire, William Thomsen, of England. But 
as we were happy then, and none of the other heirs 
came forward to make their claim, we did not 
bother ourselves about it.” 

“How do you know that your great-grandfather, 
48 


THE GREAT THOMSEN ESTATE. 49 

John Thomsen, was a descendant of William Thom- 
sen, of England, who you say left such a large es- 
tate?” Miss Gillingham asked. 

“How do I know it?” answered Mrs. Erskine 
with pride. “By the family history, and it is only 
necessary to prove this history in England, to get the 
estate and share it among the heirs. One of the 
heirs, my second cousin, Mrs. Abercrombie, a widow 
lady of Richmond, is coming here to spend some 
time with me next week, and we will make investi- 
gations and show you results that will astonish you. 
I have been receiving letters from Mrs. Abercrom- 
bie for a long time on the subject of the Thomsen 
estate,” she continued, drawing from her bosom a 
package of well-worn letters and documents. 

Mrs. Erskine then opened one of Mrs. Aber- 
crombie’s letters and handed Miss Gillingham a 
small pamphlet, which bore the signature “Edgar 
Smith, Member of the New York Bar.” The 
teacher read as follows : 

The Great Thomsen Estate of England. 

$60,000,000. 

William Thomsen died at Acton Place, in Eng- 
land, June 19th, 1798, without a will, leaving real 
and personal property amounting at that time to 
more than $5,000,000. The value of the estate 
to-day cannot be estimated; it is probably $100,- 
000,000, all in the Bank of England, subject to the 
claims of heirs who are living in Virginia. 

William Thomsen, the great millionaire, was 


50 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

the son of an aide-de-camp of the Duke of Marl- 
borough. He had but one child, John Thom- 
sen the first, who married beneath his station in life, 
thereby incurring his father’s displeasure. The 
millionaire would never look on his son again. 
John Thomsen the first, finally emigrated to Vir- 
ginia with his family, consisting of Ann, his wife, 
and three children, John, nineteen years old, and 
Luke and Elizabeth, both younger. The family 
embarked at White Haven and landed at Fredericks- 
burg on the first of December, 1765. The father, 
John Thomsen the first, died near Richmond, 
on his plantation, in 1780. The descendants of 
his children are the missing American heirs of 
the estate of his father, William Thomsen the 
millionaire of England, who died without a will, 
eighteen years after the death of his son, John 
Thomsen the first, in Virginia. Among the many 
documents and letters that we have found in Eng- 
land relating to the estate of William Thomsen, of 
Acton, we have discovered reference to a General 
John Thomsen, who was in Virginia before the 
decease of William Thomsen at Acton, England, in 
1798, and who was acknowledged by William Thom- 
sen as a relative. Our researches prove that the 
General John Thomsen, referred to in the letters of 
William Thomsen, was the child of John Thomsen 
the first, who landed at Fredericksburg in 1765. 
These researches will show where General John 
Thomsen lived and died, and will prove who his 
descendants are — all of whom are the missing Ameri- 


THE GEE AT THOMSEN ESTATE. 51 

can heirs of the great Thomsen estate of Eng- 
land. 

The following account of the birth and death of 
William Thomsen, of Acton, is from the old chronic- 
les of that time printed in London: 

“Died June 19th, in his ninety-seventh year, 
William Thomsen, of Acton Place, near LongMel- 
ford in the County of Suffolk, and of Grosvenor 
Place, London, Esquire. He was baptized in 
September, 1701, and was the son of Robert 
Thomsen, Esq., aide-de-camp to the great Duke 
of Marlborough (by Anne, his wife, daughter and 
heir of Carew Guidott, Esq., lineally descended 
from Sir Anthony Guidott, Knight, a noble Floren- 
tine, employed on sundry embassies by King Edward 
VL), and grandson of Humphrey Thomsen, of 
Erdington Hall, in the County of Warwick, Esq., 
Lord of the Manor of Nether Whitacre, in that 
County, an eminent iron-master at Birmingham. 
King William III. was godfather to the late Mr. 
Thomsen ; and among other valuables discov- 
ered in his house was a silver ewer, a gift from 
that monarch. William Thomsen had been page 
to George I., and married Esther Olyphant, 
daughter of Sir Richard Olyphant, of Leomin- 
ster, on the Lugg. By her he had one child, John, 
who emigrated to Virginia after the death of his 
mother. William Thomsen never married again. 
His son John had incurred his father’s permanent 
displeasure by a marriage beneath his station in life. 
Fully one-half of William Thomsen’s long years 


52 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


were passed in seclusion, his time being spent in 
the management of his immense estates. So vast 
was his wealth that the enumeration of his properties, 
stocks, and mortgages would fill many pages. He 
died without a will.” 

The above account shows that the claims of 
the Thomsens are founded on documentary his- 
tory. 

“Any member of the Thomsen family, or any 
descendant of a Thomsen, can become a member 
of the Association, and share in the recovery of this 
vast fortune, by signing the enclosed agreement, 
giving ten per cent, of the amount recovered, (which 
ten per cent shall cover all expenses of fees and 
suits), to the Association’s Agents, John Prescott 
Allen and Richard Peace, Esquires, Solicitors of 
London, England, and by remitting $20 in postage 
stamps, to the Treasurer of the Association, Nathan 
New, Esq., 23 Cedar St., New York.” 

Mrs. Erskine looked at Miss Gillingham as the 
latter withdrew her eyes from the page. 

“Isn’t that pretty plain?” she asked. “My cousin 
Mrs. Abercrombie, and I have been writing to Mr. 
Edgar Smith, Member of the New York Bar. It 
is the information that we have given to him, and 
the researches that we are making to prove that 
our great-grandfather was the same person as the 
General John Thomsen, mentioned in the documents 
in England, that are referred to in Mr. Smith’s 
pamphlet,” 


THE GEE AT THOMSEN ESTATE. 53 

“Where did the General live?” Miss Gilling- 
ham asked, with a comical look. 

“He lived over there on top of the hill,” replied 
Mrs. Erskine triumphantly, rising from her chair 
and pointing her thin finger at the wall. “His 
house was a grand place, much larger than the 
Manor. It was destroyed by fire long after his 
death. Nothing remains now but the- old grave- 
yard, where he and all his wives and children are 
buried.” 

“And how do you know that your ancestor, John 
Thomsen, was a general, and the person referred to 
as General John Thomsen in the letters left by 
William Thomsen of England, a hundred years 
ago?” asked Miss Gillingham. 

“We know it in this way,” Mrs. Erskine answered 
slowly. “My ancestor, John Thomsen, was a great 
man in Virginia. Thomsen’s Ordinary, near the 
Richmond Railroad Station, a celebrated tavern in 
the time of the Revolution, was named after him.” 

“Perhaps your ancestor only kept the tavern,” 
interrupted plain Miss Gillingham, innocently. 

“Nonsense,” replied Mrs. Erskine, with a quick 
glance of suspicion at the teacher’s face. “The 
Thomsens were all gentlemen. As I was say- 
ing, John Thomsen was a very wealthy man, and 
we are sure that he was a general, because all 
men of his importance were generals in those days. 
But we are going to prove that he was a general,” 
she said excitedly. “Having been a general in 
the Revolutionary War, of course he was buried in 


54 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


uniform with his sword by his side, and we have 
determined to dig up the oM grave-yard and find 
him, and show him to the world with his uniform 
and sword, just as he was in his life-time.” 

Mrs. Erskine stopped, out of breath. There was 
a little spot of red in her pale cheek, and her eyes 
were glassy. 

Miss Gillingham did not know what to say. She 
was familiar with the stories of the Thomsen estate 
in the newspapers, when she lived in Pennsylvania. 
She had often read the warnings to the public 
against the attorneys, who made a living out of 
imaginary claims to estates in the old country, but 
she could not bear the thought of destroying the 
illusion of her poor old friend. At length she asked 
whether many persons in Virginia, had subscribed 
$20 in postage stamps to join the Thomsen Associa- 
tion. 

“A great many,” Mrs. Erskine replied. “Mrs. 
Abercrombie has shown me a list of them. Mr. 
Edgar Smith agrees to give me and Mrs. Aber- 
crombie three times as much of the estate, as our 
relationship entitles us to, for our services in find- 
ing General Thomsen’s uniform and sword.” 

Once during the following week, the teacher 
found herself vigorously warning Mrs. Erskine 
against the stories of the New York lawyer, but the 
look of pain that swept over the old lady’s face, 
silenced her, and she abruptly changed the subject. 

Mrs. Abercrombie was expected from Richmond. 
The table was set for supper. Mrs. Erskine brought 


THE GREAT THOMSEN ESTATE. 55 

her guest into the sitting-room and introduced her 
to the teacher. She was a middle-aged, round- 
faced little woman, with blue eyes, a cap and cork- 
screw curls. As she sat down she said: “Miss 
Gillingham, I have a great respect for you. We 
always said in the South that the Northerners never 
did anything practical for the welfare of the negroes, 
but your life, and the lives of a few others whom I 
know contradict this. I suppose you have heard 
all about the Thomsen estate fom Mrs. Erskine?” 

“Yes,” replied the teacher, “and I had read 
about it before I came to the South.” 

Mrs. Erskine glanced nervously at Miss Gilling- 
ham and said, “Cousin Margaret, Miss Gillingham 
is a doubter ; she will not believe, until she actually 
sees the money shared among the heirs.” 

Mrs. Abercrombie looked impressive and flat- 
tened her curls on one side, with her left hand. 

“Miss Gillingham, I am not a foolish enthusiast; 
I am a business woman. For ten years, ever since 
the deaih of Mr. Abercrombie, I have made my 
living in the Richmond Post Office. Do I look like 
a person likely to be deceived?” and she pressed 
down her curls on the other side. “Mr. Edgar 
Smith, our lawyer, is well known to me. He has 
made several trips to Richmond lately. He is an 
honest and intelligent gentleman, who has reduced 
the subject of the Thomsen estate to a science. 
You will believe us, when we show you the dis- 
coveries we shall make, when we dig up the Thoni’. 
sen grave-yard next week/’ 


56 NOT OF HER FATHERS S RACE. 


“Who is to pay for the labor of digging up the 
grave-yard?” Miss Gillingham inquired. 

“Mrs. Erskine and I, of course,” answered Mrs. 
Abercrombie; “we shall be well rewarded for it. 
James Andersen, Colonel Erskine’s nephew, owns 
the burial place, and he will give us permission to 
make the search.” 

Mrs. Erskine looked up solemnly and spoke: 
“Mr. Hood and Preacher Jones have been engaged 
by me to do the work; they will be here to-night.” 

After supper Mrs. Erskine and Mrs. Abercrombie, 
went into the kitchen to meet Mr. Hood and the 
preacher. 

Mr. Jones said: “We have seen Mr. Andersen 
and he is willing for us to search the old graveyard 
for the uniform and sword, except he wont allow 
us to dig in one corner, and though he didn’t tell 
me, I know the reason why. It’s where he bury 
Lucy, Jennie’s mother, all alone in the night time' 
by himself. ’ ’ 

“How long do you think it will take you, Mr. 
Hood, to examine every grave?” Mrs. Abercrombie 
asked. 

“I have made a careful examination of the bury- 
ing ground,” Hood replied. “It covers a space 
about one hundred and twenty feet square. There 
is not a stone left to mark a burial. The preacher 
knows all about graves in Virginia. He says they 
are five feet deep and seven feet long. My plan 
is to dig trenches four feet in depth, across 
the burial place every six feet. This will open 


THE GREAT THOMSEN ESTATE. 57 

every grave, and we can examine them one by one. 
I think the work can be done in four days with six 
men.” 

“Well,” said Mrs. Abercrombie, “can you begin 
on Monday?” 

And Monday was settled upon, with the agree- 
ment that the negroes were each to' receive seventy- 
five cents a day as long - as they worked. Mr. 
Hood’s fee was to be fifteen dollars, and the preach- 
er’s ten dollars, for the entire time. 

As they went away, Preacher Jones said: “Mrs. 
Erskine, I have buried a heap of people, and 1 
wouldn’t consent to disturb the bones of any one, 
only I know these graves are so old, there aint no 
bones left. You will not find General Thomsen’s 
uniform ; it is gone long ago ; but his sword may 
be there.” 

Outside the Manor, as they walked down the 
road, the preacher spoke : 

“Mr. Hood, you of the same opinion still, that 
these people only searching after old clothes and 
a sword, and that they not looking for money ?” 

“Yes,” replied Mr. Hood; “they tell the truth 
when they say they want to find a sword to prove 
something about the Thomsen estate in England; 
it’s all a humbug. I’ve often read about it in the 
papers. Some one in the North is fooling these two 
old women. You and I are the only people who will 
make anything out of it. If there were any money 
to be found, the little Quakeress would have sniffed 
it out long ago. You see, she doesn’t care.” 


58 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


Mrs. Abercrombie and Mrs. Erskine went back 
into the sitting-room, and counted the cost of the 
work. It came to twenty-two dollars for each of 
them — a little less than the sum the old lady had in 
hand from the sale, six months before, of five 
$1000 Confederate bonds, which she had dug out 
of their resting-place for twenty years in the cellar. 
This was the last of the poor woman’s possessions, 
beyond her scanty clothing and the Manor. 

“But we may find the uniform and sword the first 
day,” Mrs.' Abercrombie said, “and then we shall 
save something in the wages of the negroes.” 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE GRAVE-YARD SECRET. 

J OHN THOMSEN, whether he were plain John, 
or a general, showed himself a man of taste in 
the selection of his site for a house. The mansion 
had stood on the brow of the hill, in front of the 
spot chosen by James Andersen for his cabin. It 
commanded a noble view, far over the fields and 
pines, with the glistening thread of the James River 
winding its way in and out, full thirty miles away. 

The only vestiges of the mansion remaining, were 
the stone steps and the old tobacco house, close to 
Andersen’s cabin. Built of hewn logs, the tobacco 
house no doubt had been intended originally for de- 
fense against the attacks of the Indians, as the loop- 
holes plainly showed. Its massive sides had with- 
stood the decay of centuries. It was there long, 
long before General John Thomsen built his house, 
long before the Thomsens came to Virginia. 

Behind the fpbacco house, within a stone’s throw 
of Andersen’s cabin, was the spot known as the 
Thomsen burial-place, a space about a hundred feet 
square, in the center of the field, covered with small 
trees and underbrush. Generation had handed 
it down to generation as a grave-yard, but no living 
soul save Andersen had seen a burial there. The 


59 


6o 


NOT OP HER PA THERMS RACE. 


ground was always exempt from cultivation. For 
many generations the negro children had whipped 
the trees for persimmons, and the wood had been 
regularly cut as it grew fit to burn. But of late 
years the story of James Andersen’s burial of black 
Lucy with his own hands in the night, had- been 
noised about, and since then no child or axemair 
dared to penetrate the thin bushes. 

Early on Monday morning, Mrs. Erskine and 
Mrs. Abercrombie walked slowly up the hill past 
Andersen’s cabin to the burying ground. Ander- 
sen saw them and came out bare-headed. • Mrs. 
Erskine introduced him to Mrs. Abercrombie, who 
said : 

“I wish you were a Thomsen, Mr. Andersen; 
Mrs. Erskine tells me you are related to her through 
the Erskines.” 

Mrs. Erskine looked away. 

Andersen bowed and replied, “I hope you will find 
the sword; I paid five dollars an acre for these ten 
acres twenty years ago, and I’ve never yet been able 
to get a good crop off the place. Perhaps you will 
be more fortunate.” 

“Mr. Andersen,” answered Mrs. Abercrombie, 
grandly, ‘T promise you in the name of the Thom- 
sen Association of Virginia, that when we find 
General Thomsen’s uniform and sword, we will give 
you the cost of your ten acres for this little spot, 
one hundred and twenty feet square. It shall then 
be fenced and preserved from the sacrilegious hands 
of the woodman and the persimmon hunter.” 


the grave.yard secret. 6 1 

Andersen went back to the cabin for his hat. 
While he was gone, Mr. Hood came round the cor- 
ner of the tobacco house, on horseback, with an 
axe over his shoulder. He showed the ladies that 
the first step would be to clear away the trees and 
underbrush; after that, they would dig trenches 
across the grave-yard, as he had explained to them. 

“Andersen will not let us touch that corner over 
there,” he said; “it is the only spot that will not 
be examined.” 

As Mr. Hood got off his horse, the workmen 
came up the hill in a body, with picks, shovels and 
axes, led by Preacher Jones, and followed by a great 
crowd of negro sight-seers. 

Soon the sound of vigorous work was heard. 

Miss Gillingham and Jennie, walking to school 
along the road, -saw the motley crowd in the field. 
Jennie cast longing glances up the hill. “It is 
late,” Miss Gillingham said, “we will stop at the 
grave-yard after school.” 

In half an hour the small trees and bushes had 
been cleared away. Mr. Hood then staked out the 
trenches, and the preacher led the way with pick and 
shovel. It was hard digging in the clayey ground. 

They had not been at work more than an hour 
when a pick struck something hollow. Mr. Hood 
called Mrs. Abercrombie and Mrs. Erskine, who 
approached the spot in a state of great excitement. 

A little shoveling laid bare the remains of a de- 
cayed coffin, some bones and a skull, with the short 
curly hair of the African still clinging to it. When 


62 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE, 


they saw this the negroes all groaned aloud. There 
was no use in looking for General Thomsen’s sword 
in such a place. Mr. Jones filled the hole rever- 
ently and dug farther on. Again, they uncovered 
an old coffin, but the tell-tale negro hair was there. 

At twelve o’clock, three trenches had been 
finished, exposing the remains of five old graves — 
nothing more. After the dinner hour work was 
begun again, this time across the center of the 
grave-yard. By five o’clock four trenches more 
were nearly completed, with the same discoveries 
of old coffins and bones as had been made in the 
morning. Preacher Jones told Mr. Hood, that the 
Lord would have a hard time finding General 
Thomsen on the Judgment day. 

Mrs. Erskine, tired and dispirited, had gone 
home. James Andersen sat on a Jog, outside the 
crowd of negroes and whites that idled round the 
trenches, Mrs'. Abercrombie beside him, industri- 
ously employing herself with her crochet work. 
Harry Erskine was in the crowd, and his father 
John Erskine. Opposite Harry, and standing next 
to Mr. Hood, were Miss Gillingham and Jennie, 
who had just returned from school. 

Jennie, deeply interested and anxiously looking 
for a^ coffin, was watching the preacher dig in the 
trench at her feet. There! The pick had struck 
something hard in the side of the hole. Jennie 
was on tip-toe with expectation. The preacher 
struck again with all his might. What was that dull, 
jingling sound? As the pick came out, Jennie saw 


THE GRAVE-YARD SECRET. 


63 


what seemed to be the end of a piece of mackerel 
keg, and in the dirt at the bottom of the trench lay 
two lar'ge gold coins. As she turned excitedly and 
told Miss Gillingham that she had seen gold, Mr. 
Hood jumped down into the trench. There was a 
dead silence for a moment, while he and the 
preacher, on their knees, examined the hole made 
by the pick, their heads being close together. 
When they rose, Jennie saw that the coins had 
disappeared. 

“What is it, Mr. Hood?” Miss Gillingham asked. 

“Only an old cofihn, with a colored man’s skull,” 
replied Mr. Hood, as he got out of the trench. 
“Cover it up, Mr. Jones, and dig beyond it.” 

Mr. Jones pulled the dirt over the hole with his 
pick and began to work in another place. 

“Jennie says she saw some gold there just now, 
Mr. Hood,” said Miss Gillingham, doub-tingly. 

“Nonsense,” answered Mr. Hood. 

The preacher looked up from the trench as he 
continued to dig. 

“There is no gold here. Miss.” 

Without another word, Jennie ran to her father, 
who was still sitting beside Mrs. Abercrombie. 

“Father, father,” she cried, “they are digging 
up gold in the trench.’’ 

“Gold,” shouted Andersen, jumping up. 

“Gold!” cried Mrs. Abercrombie. 

“Gold, gold,” ran like wildfire through the 
throng. “Gold, gold, gold,” they shrieked as they 
crowded into the trench. 


64 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

Jennie pointed to the spot. A negro caught up 
a pick, pushed the preacher away, and with two or 
three blows, down came the dirt from the side of the 
trench, and with it a shower of gold coins. 

There was a confused, struggling mass of whites 
and negroes, packed on top of each other in the 
trench, scrambling, screaming, swearing, till the 
coins had disappeared, and then a wild rush with 
picks and shovels to dig for more. 

“Stand back; stand back.” 

James Andersen came running from his cabin, 
a cocked gun in his hand. 

“Stand back; stand back!*’ he cried again, as 
he reached the hole. “I’ll shoot the man who 
touches my gold. This is my land and my gold.” 

“Oh, you stand back yourself,” shouted the 
preacher. “We has as good a right to this gold as 
you white trash,” and he struck Andersen a blow 
with his shovel. 

Then Harry Erskine with an oath seized the gun, 
and tried to tear it from Andersen’s hands, while 
Jones struck him another blow and cried out, 
“Come on, brethren. I’ll show you all where the 
gold is.” 

There was a loud report of the gun — the crowd 
rushed away from the trench. Andersen had 
jumped in, and stood there with his feet on the lifeless 
body of the preacher, his gun pointed at the crowd. 

“Come on,” he cried, “come on, and I’ll kill you 
all!” 

They were beaten. 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE MYSTERY. 

F rom the Richmond Dispatch^ August 28, 
188—. 

“The Jury, at Halifax Court House, yesterday ac- 
quitted James Andersen, on trial for assault with 
intent to kill. 

“The great excitement in Virginia eight months 
ago, caused by the discovery of $250,000 in gold by 
Mr. Andersen, in an old burying-ground on his 
plantation, is well remembered by our readers. 

“Mr. Andersen was digging up the grave-yard to 
oblige some of his relatives, who thought they could 
find the sword of General Thomsen, the supposed 
heir of the famous English estate of that name. 
The search for the sword revealed the hidden treas- 
ure, three feet under ground. 

“Mr. Andersen was attacked by a mob of negroes, 
who attempted to carry away the gold just after its 
discovery. In self-defense he shot a negro preach- 
er, named Jones. At first Jones was supposed to 
be dead, but he recovered from a buckshot wound 
in the neck and a fractured skull. 

“Where the gold came from, and by whom it was 
buried, will probably remain forever a mystery. It 
was contained in five large nail kegs, of a very old 
American make, with the brands carefully cut away. 
The coins were all American Eagles, $50,000 in each 
65 


66 not of her FATHER’S RACE. 

keg, with various dates of coinage, none less than 
thirty-five years old. There was nothing to indicate 
haste in the burial. The treasure was far under 
ground, and there were apparently no marks on the 
surface to point to the spot. 

“Of course, the public at once jumped to the con- 
clusion that the treasure of $250,000 was a relic of 
the war. It probably was. But where is the hand 
that bifried it? Why did the secret of its burial 
die? For if the secret had not died, eager hands 
would have found the gold long since. 

“It is said that neither General Lee’s retreating 
army, nor President Jefferson Davis in his hasty 
departure from Richmond, had any treasure what- 
ever. But admitting, for argument’s sake, that 
either Lee or Davis may have carried treasure in their 
hasty flight and concealed it in the Thomsen grave- 
yard, why was there not honest, or dishonest, recla- 
mation at noon or midnight, years ago? 

“General Grant’s army swept across the neigh- 
borhood of the grave-yard once at the close of the 
war. True, yet the disappearance of a large sum 
from the chests of a triumphant and well organized 
army, would have been a matter of record, and no 
record of such a loss exists. 

“If the money were stolen from either army by 
marauders or secret thieves and buried, why did 
they not return for it? What was their fate? 

“The search for General Thomsen’s sword, and 
its wonderful result, the discovery of a large for- 
tune by Mr. Andersen, will always remain a sub- 
ject of curious speculation in Virginia.’’ 


CHAPTER X. 


JENNIE AND HER FATHER BECOME NEW YORKERS. 

“l^EAR father, ” Jennie i\ndersen wrote from 

\_J Morristown, New Jersey, “there is a fever 
in the town and we are all so frightened, that in 
three days school will break up for the Christmas 
Holidays, a month earlier than usual. I cannot 
remain here during the vacation, as 1 have always 
done, since my first year. Miss Gillingham will tell 
you all about it ; I have written to her. Please 
come for me at once. It is three years since I have 
been at home. No one is ill at school.” 

Four years had passed, and during all that time 
Jennie Anderson had been at school in Morristown, 
New Jersey. It was Miss Gillingham who chose 
the school. It was Miss Gillingham who forced 
Andersen to educate his daughter with the grave- 
yard gold. Jennie came home during the holidays 
the first year; but after that, to Miss Gillingham’s 
disappointment, she spent her summers at the school 
in Morristown. But was this to be wondered at? - 
In Morristown Jennie Andersen was white. In 
Lunenberg she was black. 

Four years had passed. James Andersen had 
been sitting for half-an-hour in the evening with 
Mrs. Erskine, and then walked up the road with 
a brisk, firm step to his new house on the hill. The 
" 67 


68 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


teacher was in her room finishing a letter to her 
father. Her school was prospering. She had five as- 
sistants under her and pupils came from miles away. 

Summoned home to Chester suddenly by tele- 
graph, six months before, the strongest tie* that holds 
the future to the past was cut. She found her 
mother dead. 

“Daughter,” her father said, as they stood in 
the quiet, white curtained room, “mother told me 
to tell you that she died thanking God for the noble 
life of her brave girl, who was doing good among the 
negroes.” 

James Andersen had left word that night with 
Mrs. Erskine for Miss Gillingham, that he was 
going North the next morning to bring Jennie 
home from school. He always left word for the 
teacher, when he could avoid seeing her. He never 
stood mentally square on his feet, in her presence. 
She looked him through, with a glance of her gray 
eyes. And how could it be otherwise? James 
Andersen was no longer an object of pity, and not 
to pity such a man, was with Miss Gillingham to 
despise him. What a vain, arrogant fellow he was, 
hiding the secret recollection of his former suffer- 
ings, beneath his open glorification in his present 
prosperity. With his vanity he was silent, secretive 
and mean. 

How prosperity will change a man ! It gave 
Andersen spirits and health and strength. He was 
a distinguished looking person, with a tall, slim 
figure, red cheeks and long mustachios. He would 


THE ANDERSENS BECOME NE W YORKERS. 69 

sometimes talk with a drawl of the battles of the 
Civil War. — And the war was his only claim to the 
respect of Virginians, for he had carried a musket, 
as a private in Lee’s army, from Bull Run to the 
surrender at Spottsylvania. 

Captain Andersen, as they called him now, since 
the discovery of the gold, was not a coward nor a 
liar; but he lacked self-respect. 

His inner self was a great contrast with the 
assumption of his outer self. Miss Gillingham 
felt the contrast, while her love and solicitude for 
Jennie, was a tie that bound her to him. 

No wonder they were not at ease together. 

Where was Abraham Lincoln Jones? Abe’s 
father, the Reverend Mr. Jones, had been dead two 
years, and not long after the funeral Hannah mar- 
ried a man young enough to be her son. Abe was 
sore at heart at home, and one day he told the 
teachep that he had got a place in a New York hotel. 

“I shall always ’member you. Miss,” he said, and 
he was gone, never to be heard of more. 

Harry Erskine was in the North, his father told 
the neighbors, hard at work and prospering. No 
one had seen him for many a day. 

It had been noised about Lunenberg, that Cap- 
tain Andersen had gone north to bring his daughter 
home. There was a collection of sightseers, when 
Jennie arrived at the station by the five o’clock 
train. 

John Erskine came out of the store with the mail 
bag, and elbowed his way along through the crowd 


70 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


on the platform, followed by Miss Gillingham, who 
greeted Jennie with a quiet kiss. John Erskine 
shook hands obsequiously with Captain Andersen, 
took his checks and went to the baggage car for the 
trunks. 

“Isn’t she pretty?’’ “Oh, she’s sweet,’’ the 
teacher heard on all sides, as Jennie passed through 
the throng of negroes. 

Jennie was a striking picture to burst on the vis- 
ion of such a neighborhood. She wore white flow- 
ers in her bonnet, and her beautiful face and com- 
manding figure, had all the advantages that the arts 
of milliner and dressmaker could give. She was 
just eighteen. Her form was tall and willowy. 
Her eyes and hair were dark. She wore her hair 
in defiance of the fashion, parted and smooth above 
a noble brow. Her face was oval, yet she had a 
strong chin and mouth, and an aquiline nose, with 
thin nostrils. No wonder they called her a 
Southern Aristocrat, at the school in Morristown. 
No wonder that no one who saw her in the North 
suspected the taint in her blood. 

Andersen wore a fur-lined overcoat that he had 
brought from Paris, when he made a three months’ 
trip abroad the ytM before. 

Captain Andersen had bought a tract of land near 
the Manor. His new house was the talk of the 
county, and with good reason, for it was the first 
structure above the degree of a log cabin, that 
had been built in the neighborhood for many a 
year. 


THE ANDERSENS BECOME NE W YORKERS. 7 1 

The Andersens were settled down for the Christ- 
mas holidays — settled to a life of loneliness, that 
made Jennie long for school again. 

Not all the gold of Orillana could hide the stain of 
Jennie’s birth from a Virginian. No one but Mrs. 
Erskine and her son John, Harry’s father, came 
near them. 

Captain Andersen was a popular man of money 
in Richmond, his friends were glad to meet him in 
the bank, or at the hotel — anywhere in fact, except 
at his house or table, where his daughter was- 

Why had not Andersen fled from Virginia four 
years before with his suddenly acquired wealth, 
and made a new nama and home for himself among 
strangers? 

The answer is plain enough — James Andersen 
knew no other place than Virginia. He had 
remained there through his early sufferings, through 
his sudden accession of fortune, bound by the same 
spell of locality that controls an animal when it 
returns day after day to its accustomed den, that it 
knows is watched by hunters. The spell kept him 
in Virginia, just as he had been led by blind animal 
instinct to clothe and feed his daughter Jennie, and 
bear a share of the burden of her tainted birth. — 
Yes, it was mere animal instinct that bound Ander- 
sen to Jennie, not human parental love. 

But the spell of locality was soon to be broken. 

Every afternoon at four o’clock, Jennie rode over 
to the Manor and hitching her horse to the porch 
spent an hour with Miss Gillingham. Often, after 


72 


NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 


sending word to her father, she remained all 
night. 

Jennie had seen a new world at school. Miss 
Gillingham read in her pupil’s frequent letters the 
description of friend after friend, schoolmates from 
the great City of New York. Jennie described her 
visits to their homes during the holidays, and spoke 
with school-girl rapture of the pleasures of life 
in the North. Gradually the early hope of the 
teacher, that her pupil would grow up to be her 
companion and assistant in the narrow path of duty 
at the negro school, had been crushed to atoms. 

How could it have been otherwise? At Morris- 
town, Jennie Andersen was the admired Southern 
beauty, a real “F. F. V.” as her friend, Elsie 
Anspach, called her. In Lunenberg she was a 
negress. A saint, if old and wrinkled, might have 
shouldered the burden of degradation in Virginia, 
from a sense of duty, but Jennie was neither a saint, 
nor old and wrinkled. 

The final blow came now from Jennie’s lips. 
“My dearest friend, next to you, Miss Gilling- 
ham,’’ she said, “is Elsie Anspach. She finishes 
with me at Morristown next year. Elsie’s father is 
one of the richest men in the North. He often 
comes to Morristown, and he has told me that I 
must bring my father to live in New York. I came 
home, determined to do this after Christmas, but 
now the awful loneliness of this place for us, makes 
me want to go away at once. Every one likes me in 
the North. All the white people despise me here. 


THE ANDERSENS BECOME NE W YORKERS. 73 

When we are living in New York, you will come to 
see us, Miss Gillingham, and we shall be so happy.” 

Ten days had elapsed since Captain Andersen 
returned from the North with his daughter; only 
ten days, and they stood at the station at Lunen- 
berg with Miss Gillingham, waiting for the train 
that was to bear Jennie away to a new life. 

Jennie had brought it about in one passionate 
interview with her father. The truth was plain. 
Andersen had money enough to live as a gentleman 
in the North. In Virginia, his early life and poor 
Jennie, were a disgrace to him. In New York his,, 
story was unknown, and his beautiful daughter 
would be a credit to him. Jennie’s tears and 
entreaties, and her skillful presentation of the facts 
overcame her father’s dread of change. To Miss 
Gillingham and John Erskine were committed the 
sale of horses, wagons and furniture, and the rent- 
ing of the plantation. It was a clean sweep. 

Alone with Jennie in the morning. Miss Gilling- 
ham had burst into tears. 

‘‘Oh, Jennie, I always hoped you would be a 
teacher with me. I see plainly now that you can- 
not stay here. It is impossible. But you do not 
know what you are to encounter in New York. 
There is no one to protect you. God help you ! 
God help you! I wish I could be with you.” 

‘‘Come with us. Come with me to New York,” 
Jennie cried, seizing the teacher’s hand. 

Miss Gillingham shook her head sadly. ‘‘It can- 
not be,” she said. 


74 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


At the station she was calm. Jennie wept, as 
the train drew up. It was all over in a minute. 
Jennie looked back out of the car window. Miss 
Gillingham was standing on the platform watching 
the receding train. She looked again, far down the 
straight track. The teacher was still there. 


CHAPTER XI. 

JOHN ANSPACH, BANKER. 

O H, the changes of the earth in its ages and the 
inhabitants thereof! — Behold a dozen Esqui- 
maux breakfasting on the remains of a frozen 
tropical elephant in the Polar regions, and Palmyra 
slowly crumbling to dust. 

But it is in New York that Time shows his most 
wonderful transformations. Here, he is a Demo- 
crat, and accomplishes in a day the changes of gener- 
ations of men. New York life contrasts with life 
elsewhere, as the forcing beds in a Dutch vegetable 
garden contrast with the growth of the rows of 
dignified cabbages, that take their own leisure to 
come to maturity. 

From the poor devil to the millionaire and from 
the millionaire back to the poor devil, is but a step, 
a turn and a step. 

A lucky or industrious fellow begins life in his 
shirt-sleeves in the morning, buys a coat to eat his 
dinner in, and puts on purple and fine linen in the 
evening. If he die that night, his children may 
find themselves poor enough, to have to begin the 
world next morning in their shirt-sleeves too. 

John A. Anspach was a very bright fellow, they 
said in New York: Every one down-town knew 
75 


76 NOT OF HER FATHERS S RACE. 

him. He was a growing man with his little bank. 
After business hours he disappeared across the 
river, to a small house in the outskirts of Jersey City, 
where his pretty wife, Wilhelmina, did most of the 
housework. The only fault she found with John 
was, that he often sat up after midnight, hatching 
sharp plans of business for the morrow, and was 
apt to be late for an early breakfast. 

Where did John get his thrift? Straight from the 
Pennsylvania Dutch, where he got his wife. His 
grandfather was a Hessian trooper, who deserted 
and settled in Bucks County during the Revolu- 
tonary War. 

John and his wife looked very much alike when 
they married in Reading. Both were good looking 
and thickset. They had black eyes, good health 
and good tempers. When they courted, it was in 
Pennsylvania Dutch. 

John’s father kept a grocery store and brought his 
son up to that business. 

When John married, he left Wilhelmina at her 
father’s farm, near Reading, with half of the twenty- 
five dollars that he was then ahead of the world, and 
went down to Philadelphia. There he managed 
to scrape acquaintanceship with the manufacturers 
of woolen goods in Pennsylvania and New England. 

The Civil War was beginning. John had a 
friend, a member of Congress from Reading. With 
the influence of the Congressman in Washington, 
John was soon busy getting army contracts for 
the woolen manufacturers from the Government, 


JOHN A NSPA CH, BANKER. 7 7 

the profits on which he shared with his friend the 
statesman. 

In a year John had a partnership in a New York 
firm, and moved his wife to Jersey City. Then he 
made sales of poor army shoddy to the government. 
When the war ended he had made $150,000. 

After that he drifted into Wall Street, lost part 
of his money, made it back again, and started his 
bank. 

Twenty years passed by, and the name of John 
A. Anspach became known wherever financial 
schemes were floated. He was one of Wall Street’s 
magnates. 

John and his wife had just moved from Jersey 
City to New York. It had taken them a year to 
furnish their house in Fifty-seventh Street near 
P'ifth Avenue. 

Wilhelmina had been content to remain in Jersey 
City while Elsie, their only daughter, who was at 
school in Morristown, was growing up. 

But John and his wife had learned, as they grew 
rich, to want and to enjoy every luxury, and Wil- 
helmina had a longing for the gay world, both for her- 
self and for her daughfer. She was a careful reader 
of the newspaper accounts of balls and dinner par- 
ties, and now that Elsie was almost grown, she felt 
it was high time to find out the shortest way by 
which John’s money, would take her and Elsie 
everywhere that a good mother should want her 
daughter to go, from the dinners of the Windsor Set 
to the Ancients’ ball. 


78 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


A New York residence is supposed by all to be 
the good mother’s best field, and therefore to New 
York the Anspachs moved. 

Elsie was to come home in a week, for the 
Christmas holidays, when John told his wife, for the 
fortieth time, that they had accomplished nothing 
by leaving Jersey City, save to double their expenses. 

“You do not know a soul. You said you would 
get into New York society; where is society? Do 
you know any one of the four hundred families that 
the newspapers say are the aristocracy of New 
York?” 

Mrs. Anspach could not reply: Her husband had 
told the truth. Next evening, after John had 
eaten his soup, she looked across the table smil- 
ingly by way of preface, and said: 

“Dear, we have not been ready to receive people 
since we came to New York, and Elsie has not 
been here. When she comes home, we will give a 
ball.” 

“But, you do not know any one to invite,” John 
answered. “People out of your line will not come 
to you on a simple advertisement that you want to 
see them at a ball,” and he stuck the fork vigor- 
ously in the beef and began to carve. Suddenly 
he stopped and regarded his wife with a look in his 
eyes, as if he foresaw a rise in stocks. 

“Wilhelmina,” he said, “I have it. There is a 
man who does business for me, named Grosvenor 
Hardenberg. He’s as poor as a rat, but he belongs 
to an old New York family, and he has a handsome 


JOHN AN SPACE, BANKER. 79 

wife and daughter. We’ll give an entertainment, 
a grand ball, to his girl, and invite all her mother’s 
acquaintances. Then they’ll give one to Elsie. 
The balls will start us with a good set of acquaint- 
ances. John Anspach is able to pay for both.” 

This ^as the last time John ever made a sug- 
gestion to his wife in the business of society. She 
soon knew it all herself. 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE SON. 

W ELL, dear,” said Wilhelmina, ‘‘Elsie and I 
went to the Albemarle Hotel this afternoon 
to see her Virginia friend. Miss Andersen. What a 
beautiful girl she is, and her father, the General, 
such a distinguished, soldierly-looking gentleman.” 

They were at dinner. John as neat as a pin, in 
a dress suit, with his ruddy face warmed up with 
the claret. 

“I will stop and leave a card for General Ander- 
sen to-morrow afternoon, as.I come up-town,” John 
replied. ‘‘I want to tell you that I arranged with 
Grosvenor Hardenberg that we are to give a ball to 
his daughter. Mrs, Hardenberg will pay you a visit 
at once and give you a list of names,” and John 
smiled at his wife and Elsie. Then he said, as he 
looked at his son’s vacant place at .the table, ‘‘I 
wish William would eat his dinner at home, some- 
times; he always dines at the Club.” 

‘‘All the young men dine at the Club, father,” 
answered Elsie; ‘‘it’s the fashion, and Bill says he 
is very much talked about by the swells,” 

Elsie Anspach was a chubby, round-faced girl, 
with black eyes, like her father and mother. She 
was an extra sweet, as the pomologists say of some 
8o 


THE SON. 


8i 


kinds of apples. Gentle and loving, she would not 
disturb a grasshopper on the lawn, if she could help 
it, the dear little thing. She admired her brother 
Bill with her whole heart. All good girls admire their 
brothers, till they find some one to fall in love with. 

Mr. William Anspach, aged twenty-five years, was 
unlike any of the rest of the family.' 

“That boy has a great head, Wilhelmina,” his 
father often said. “He’s a natural born trader, but 
he is too cool about everything. He cares no more 
for me, than he does for any one else who helps him 
along.” 

Bill Anspach was a singular fellow. A tall man, 
with red hair, who never lost his temper; a college 
bred man, who never opened a book, and never 
opened his mouth nor his heart, unless it was 
profitable, or absolutely necessary. A man devoted 
to business, with no intimate friends but his busi- 
ness friends ; who did not go to dinners or balls, and 
whose sole pleasure after business hours was to 
dine every day at the Club among the swells, and 
then drive his fast bays through the Park alone. 
His vices were his own and he kept them to himself. 
Mean in all his personal expenses, except his clothes 
and his horses, and in these extravagant, he sacri- 
ficed everything to outward show. Even the salaries 
of his poor clerks, contributed by their meagreness to 
the rent of the magnificent offices of the Bank. 

When Bill drove in the Park, sitting bolt upright, 
looking neither to the right nor the left, many a 
mother heaved a sigh with the thought of her sweet 


82 


NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 


daughter’s third season, and wondered why that 
fellow would not go into society a little. 

Down-town every one hated and envied him, as 
much as they admired him. 

John A. Anspach and William Anspach, father 
and son, were a tower of financial strength. Not a 
public plan for the amusement of the people and 
the glorification of the designing and the vain, was 
launched in the newspapers, without their names 
at the head of the list of subscribers. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

NAME AND TITLE. 



HEN James Andersen strolled out the first 


VV morning after his arrival in New York, he 
stood for half an hour, in front of the hotel, gazing 
at the crowd hurrying down-town. He had seen 
Paris and New York once before on his hurried 
journey abroad, but the sight of the crowded street 
was new to him. It astonished him to see such an 
expenditure of nervous energy without any appa- 
rent object. 

At breakfast he told Jennie, that the people were 
all chasing each other down the street like madmen. 

In the morning they went forth, through the 
shops on Union Square, and then down Broadway, 
till they took a stage that carried them up Fifth 
Avenue, to Central Park. 

The size of the buildings and the magnificence of 
the women’s dresses astonished Jennie, and she gave 
utterance to many exclamations of delight, to the 
great amusement of a tall young man with a light 
mustache and red necktie. He was so much 
amused, that he stared her out of countenance, and 
would have spoken to her, had not her father glared 
at him till he pulled the bell rope and slunk away. 

Andersen soon grew accustomed to the crowd and 


84 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


the great buildings, and was as impassive as if he 
had been Northern born and bred. 

On their return, Jennie went upstairs and her 
father sauntered through the hotel corridor. 

The office clerk recognized Andersen as the dis- 
tinguished looking Southerner who had arrived late 
the night before, and approaching him respectfully, 
he said, “General, we did not get your name last 
night, shall I put it down for you now?“ 

“James Calhoun Andersen, of Virginia,” the 
Southerner replied deliberately, and it was recorded 
in the clerk’s bold hand, “General James Calhoun 
Andersen of Virginia,” from that time forth. 

Dubbed a general by the clerk, with his own 
addition of Calhoun to his Christian name, was it 
not in keeping with the size of the buildings and 
with the showiness of the shops, that plain James 
Andersen should swell to General James Calhoun 
Andersen, in New York? 

Jennie, my dear little heart, as you stand in the 
second story window of the hotel, looking at the 
throng of men and vehicles in the street, what is in 
your brain? Every foolish hope, that your limited 
experience of life makes it possible for you to 
frame. You long to be a Queen — not Cleopatra, 
of Egypt, nor Eugenie, once Queen of the French, 
who, by the way, with her late excellent husband, 
Napoleon III., King of Humbug, would be quite 
at home in New York. You do not, I say, long 
to be either of these handsome ladies. They were 
not New Yorkers, and you scarcely ever beard of 


NAME AND TITLE. 


85 


them at school. A New York Queen is your 
ideal — one of the Queens whom you and Elsie 
Anspach have so often heard talked about at the 
Morristown school, who go to dinners and balls, 
and are described in the newspapers — Queens 
of society, whom the men all worship, and the 
women all abuse. But this you have not yet 
learned. You expect to be admired, and your 
innocent breast is full of the desires that are stirred 
by the whirl of this wild city. You are beauti- 
ful. Yes, a glance in the mirror confirms it. The 
men stare in the street, and how subservient every 
one is in the hotel. 

The next day the newspapers contained the 
announcement that General James Calhoun Ander- 
sen, of Virginia, and his daughter, were at the Albe- 
marle Hotel. 

Andersen soon felt at home in New York. He 
visited the Anspachs’ Bank and opened an account. 
Bill Anspach sent a clerk to show him the Treas- 
ury, the Stock Exchange, and all the sights down- 
town. 

Mrs. Anspach and Elsie came every day for 
Jennie in the carriage and drove to Tiffany’s, to 
Arnold and Constable’s, and to the modiste’s, 
where Jennie was absorbed in the mysteries of 
dresses to be made. 

One morning as they drove back to the hotel, 
Mrs. Anspach told Jennie that she had decided 
not to send Elsie to school again. 

“She has been at Morristown four years,’’ shq 


86 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


said. “In another year she will be nineteen. It is 
time she should go into society, and we intend to 
give her private instruction in literature and the 
modern languages.” 

Elsie was very happy with the thought of giving 
up school, but her eyes filled with tears as she turned 
to Jennie and said, “What shall I do without you, 
dear?” 

“If you leave Morristown, I will go away, too,” 
Jennie replied, positively. “Father lets me do just 
as I please.” 

This settled the question. Elsie and Jennie were 
no longer school girls. The change was due to 
John and Wilhelmina Anspach’s desire to put on 
their visiting list as speedily as possible, the names 
of the four hundred families who were said by the 
newspapers to be the aristocracy of New York. 
To accomplish this they found it necessary to 
bring Elsie out in society, and to give a ball at 
once to Grosvenor Hardenberg’s daughter. 

Now the Andersens dined with the Anspachs in 
Fifty-seventh Street, and the Anspachs dined with 
the Andersens at Delmonico’s, and they went often 
to the theater, and occupied the Anspachs’ box at 
the opera. 

Bill Anspach was always one of the party at the 
opera. On the theater nights he did not go. His 
father told Jennie, with a wink, that Bill had never 
gone with them before. “He’s a queer fellow, and 
his going to the opera is & great compliment to 
.you.” 


NAME AND TITLE. 


87 


All the dinners and all the opera-going could not 
break the crust of impassive reserve and dignity 
with which General Andersen surrounded himself. 
Once, and once only, John Anspach, in the midst 
of one of his loud guffaws, slapped the General on 
the knee. The offended member sought its fellow 
with resentful gravity. Andersen’s eyes grew fixed 
for an instant, and a hush fell on the company, as if 
something dreadful were about to happen. 

“General Andersen. is very stilf, isn’t he,’’ John 
said to his wife that night. “I can’t break the ice 
with him.’’ 

“Dear,” his wife replied, “he is very aristocra- 
tic ; I like his reserve ; he was a great soldier and 
slaveholder. ’ ’ 

“Soldiering be hanged,’’ answered Anspach, “it 
is as much a thing of the past as slavery. General 
Andersen keeps a good bank account, and this is 
all there is in him, or in any man. But his aris- 
tocracy, I’ll admit, may be valuable to you for a 
little while, till you acquire aristocracy yourself, 
Wilhelmina.’’ 


CHAPTER XIV. 

TWO DISINTERESTED FRIENDS. 

ROSVENOR HARDENBERG was a stock- 



IJ broker. A man of fair ability, but for some 
reason that no one sought to explain, he never had 
been able to earn more than the luxurious living 
of a man about town, who knows every one worth 
knowing. His handsome wife was a daughter of 
the late ex-Senator Wiggins. There was a tradi- 
tion of great intellect in her family, that had 
descended from the pompous old Wiggins, who 
had been a well-known politician. 

Mrs. Hardenberg knew the world. She had 
kept alive in the minds of her friends the remem- 
brance of the blood of the first settlers of New 
Amsterdam, that tan in her husband’s veins, besides 
preserving the friendships of her youth, when every 
one knew her as a belle. She bullied her husband, 
in a quiet way, and never let him forget how many 
offers she had refused, among them the hand of a 
gentleman, who had since flourished as one of the 
millionaires of New York. When he worshiped her, 
however, he was only the smart, pushing son of a 
well-to-do fish and poultry dealer of Washington 
Market; but this, Mrs. Hardenberg never men- 
tioned to her husband. 


88 


TIVO DISINTERESTED FRIENDS. 89 

Hardenberg and his wife had lived along, always 
intimate with the most influential people, always on 
the crest of the wave of City life, but maintaining 
that place with difficulty, by the hard work of Mrs. 
Hardenberg, and by the expenditure of more money 
than they earned in dull years, and nearly all the 
money, that came to them when trade was brisk. 

Mrs. Hardenberg was a worker; she had two 
fields — the newspapers and her visiting list. 

In newspaper subscription lists for well-known 
charities, she was untiring. Her name appeared 
in the organization of societies for the promotion 
of everything that was right and for the preven- 
tion of everything that was wrong, while no ball 
list was complete without the names' of Mr. and 
Mrs. Grosvenor Hardenberg. To produce the 
noise and commotion necessary to maintain a 
position of this kind in New York, without a large 
fortune, and the lavish expenditure of money, 
required good health and strong muscles, and 
these Mrs. Hardenberg had inherited from the ex- 
Senator. 

Grosvenor Hardenberg told his wife that John A. 
Anspach was living in Fifty-seventh Street, near 
Fifth Avenue, and that he had proposed to give a 
ball to their daughter Maud. 

“Mr. Anspach, of Jersey City,” replied Mrs. Har- 
denberg sharply, for she knew all about her hus- 
band’s patrons, “and do you mean to confess that 
you never told me of his coming to New York? 
What a careless man you are ! I have several times 


90 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

been on the point of going to see Mrs. Anspach in 
Jersey City. Now that they have come to New 
York, they want to give a ball to Maud to get our 
visiting list. I will go to see Mrs. Anspach this 
afternoon. They will be great people in New 
York.” 

“My dear Mrs. Anspach, I have so often heard 
of you in the world, that it seems as if I knew you 
well,” Mrs. Hardenberg said, as the two ladies met 
and measured each other in Mrs. Anspach’s draw- 
ing-room. 

“She is vulgar, but oh, so rich,” thought Mrs. 
Hardenberg. 

“She is no better than I am,” Mrs. Anspach said 
to herself, “and she is fifty, at least.” 

When two women, devoted to getting on in so- 
ciety, are met to talk of a proposed ball, it may be 
depended upon, that nothing will be said, that 
ought to be repeated to any one but an enemy. 
Mrs. Hardenberg tried her best to make Mrs. 
Anspach feel that she was getting a big plum in 
securing the use of her name and visiting list for 
the ball, while Mrs. Anspach rather awkwardly 
made as light of the matter as possible. “I long to 
see the children enjoy themselves,” she said as they 
parted. 

“My dear,” said Mrs. Anspach, to her husband, 
when he came home, “Mrs. Hardenberg was here 
to-day; she’s a great snob; she was so condescend- 
ing—” 

“Pshaw,” Johnreplied; “don’t you bother about 


TWO DISINTERESTED FRIENDS. 


9 


that; let her down easy; she will be humble enough 
after a while. ” 

The great author of the book of “Snobs” would 
be astonished, could he see the change that a voyage 
across the Atlantic, and a residence in the invigorat- 
ing air of the United States, have brought about in 
the word “Snob.” Snob, in Thackeray’s time, 
m.eant a commonplace man or woman, who admired 
nothing in life but worldly prosperity. To-day the 
word is used by most people in New York, just as 
Mrs. Anspach used it, to describe a person of proud 
and haughty mien, who claims importance. Our 
Snob has grown from the mean fellow cringing be- 
fore his superiors, to be the important man of the 
world, proud of his acquaintance and of himself. 
And in this we have followed our English cousins, 
along the Anglo-Saxon highway of thought and 
speech, in their treatment of “Swell.” A swell with 
them once meant a loud and vulgar commonplace 
person of wealth. To-day, a swell may be loud 
and vulgar, but the world does not set him down as 
common. Ask any one in London, from gent to 
gentleman, from a pickpocket to the Prince of 
Wales, to define a swell, and the answer will be, “A 
fashionable person of some prominence.” 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE MATCHMAKER. 

I T was a rainy night. There were few men in the 
dining-room of the Club. Young Mortimor 
Hardenberg was eating his dinner with Bill Anspach. 
Mortimor, a youth of twenty-one, looked like his 
father, with a touch of his mother’s force. He sat 
down at the invitation of Bill Anspach, and was 
soon talking busily to his silent listener. 

Near the window two gentlemen were dining 
together. They were watching Bill Anspach, and 
he was the subject of their conversation. The 
younger, a handsome man with regular features 
and dark eyes, was Thomas Fishbourne, a hard- 
working lawyer from Philadelphia, who, after he 
had settled in New York, first came into notice 
as one of the junior counsel in the suits against 
the notorious Fitch and his partners, when they 
were indicted and tried for bribing the Board of 
Aldermen to grant them street railway charters. 
The other man was evidently a Bostonian. You 
can always tell Boston men by the English cut 
of their clothes, and their habit of wearing, or 
attempting to wear side-whiskers. Charles Amory 
was a sturdy-looking fellow. As managing editor 
of the New York Enquirer^ he had made a name 
92 


THE MA TCHMAiCER. 93 

for himself. Fishbourne and Amory graduated at 
Harvard together. They had been faithful to 
each other during the days of their early struggle 
in New York, and as neither of them had yet mar- 
ried, they were still friends. 

“I tell you, Fishbourne,” said Amory, “Bill 
Anspach is the keenest man in Wall Street. Our 
financial writer tells me, he has his finger in every- 
thing. He has tried lately to gain the Enquirer s 
influence in his schemes. Only the other day an 
old gentleman, whom I never would have suspected 
to be his tool, persuaded one of our stockholders to 
buy some stock in a new coal company at half the 
market price, and then Anspach came to me with 
an introduction from the buyer, and asked me to 
publish something in the editorial page puffing the 
stock. ” 

“Well, Fishbourne, I suppose you are going to 
the costume ball at the Anspachs. It is given, 
they say, in honor of Maud Hardenberg, Mortimor 
Hardenberg’s sister, but the real object is to bring 
the Anspachs themselves out in society.” 

“Of course I am going,” replied Fishbourne, 
“Will you be there?” 

“My dear fellow, how can I go?” Amory an- 
swered. “My work begins at nine o’clock at night 
and does not end till two in the morning, when we 
go to press. You know I never go to balls. What 
newspaper man does? Society is afraid of us, and 
we are afraid of society.” 

But there was another reason why Amory could 


94 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


not go to the ball that he did not tell his friend; he 
had not been invited. Mrs. Hardenberg had in- 
tentionally left his name out of the Anspachs’ 
list. 

The previous summer, Amory had gone to Bar 
Harbor to spend a month’s vacation. The Harden- 
bergs were there. The bachelor managing editor of 
the great newspaper was big game for Mrs. Harden- 
berg, and she made up her mind that he. was the man 
who should marry her daughter. Maud was a bru- 
nette with a petite figure and vivacious manners. 
Amory was tall with blue eyes. “How natural that 
such opposites should fall in love,” the scheming 
mother thought. 

Amory’s room was near the Hardenbergs’, he was 
constantly meeting them on the piazza and spending 
part of the evening in their company. There were 
boating parties and riding parties through the day, 
and Mrs. Hardenberg contrived that the editor 
should be continually at Maud’s side. This state 
of affairs had lasted for exactly ten days, when 
Amory was suddenly summoned to New York by 
a telegram. There was a serious breach in the 
peace of the Republican party. Roscoe Conkling 
had resigned his seat in the Senate, and a consulta- 
tion between the editors and proprietors of the 
Enquirer was necessary, to decide the political 
policy of the newspaper. 

Amory, on his way to the depot to take the train, 
met Mrs. Hardenberg and her daughter out driving. 
He leaned over the side of the carriage and told them 


THE MA TCH MAKER. 95 

that he was called away suddenly, but hoped to 
return. 

There had been no love-making during the ten 
days, and the mother knew it. But there was some- 
thing in the man’s manner at parting that informed 
Mrs. Hardenberg’s experienced mind, that he had 
detected her schemes for Maud, and when he did 
not return to Bar Harbor, she was furious. Her 
open hostility afterwards in town, confirmed Amo- 
ry’s suspicions of his escape. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

HOW FISHBOURNE BECAME LUCKY. 

T om FISHBOURNE had known John Ans- 
pach a long time. When Fishbourne first 
came to New York from Pennsylvania, he waited 
on the banker with a letter of introduction from 
the Congressman, who had given John his start in 
life by securing the Army contracts in Washington. 
The banker dropped the letter in the waste-basket, 
before the young lawyer’s eyes, and forgot him ten 
minutes afterwards in the street. 

The fate of the unlucky is never known in New 
York. Had CEdipus, a worthy man doomed by the 
gods to crime and financial disaster, lived on Fifth 
Avenue, it would not have been necessary for the 
earth to open and swallow him, to hide his troubles. 
His misfortunes would have blotted him out of the 
minds of men, quite as effectually as the yawning 
abyss. Any one to be known in New York must 
be lucky. 

How many pretty speeches of Fishbourne’s rela- 
tives and friends concerning his going to New York, 
had proved erroneous. His dear mother had said: 
“Tom, your ancestors were all distinguished law- 
yers. Every one in Philadelphia and Washing- 
ton has heard the name of Fishbourne at the bar. 
96 


I/O IV FISHBOURNE BECAME LUCKY. 97 

Be a true Fishbourne in New York, and you will 
be treated with the professional consideration that 
is your due. ” 

And then his father’s old friend Barstow, the 
Philadelphia lawyer, had written to him: “New 
York is the place for a bright lawyer. A man with 
your learning and talent is sure to be speedily 
recognized/’ 

But all this was a mistake. Tom had to fight 
his way and bide his time for good luck, just as if 
his name were Brown, and he a stupid fellow. 

There was little Smith. He knew nothing of law 
nor of anything else. He had a narrow forehead, 
white hair, and a pug nose, through which he talked. 
In some way he got into the Clubs. In the same way 
the rich family of Wortendykes took him up. He 
drew a large income from them alone, in the exami- 
nation of titles. He dressed in the height of the 
fashion, drove fine horses, and patronized Fishbourne 
whenever he met him. Smith was lucky, arid every 
one respected him for it. 

But Tom Fishbourne was determined to know the 
Anspachs, in spite of the failure of the letter of 
introduction from the Congressman. 

One afternoon, while walking up Broadway, on 
the way to his rooms in Union Square, he entered 
a picture store, tempted by a flashy placard, announc- 
ing an, auction sale of paintings by great masters — 
the collection of the late Hon. Thomas Wellington 
Timmins, once Minister at the Court of St. James. 

Of course, as Timmins had lived at the Court of 


98 NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 

St. James, dining frequently with the Queen, and 
knowing all the little St. Jameses, the pictures 
attracted a great deal of attention. 

Fishbourne found a throng of well-known people 
attending the sale. Among them, were John Ans- 
pach and his wife. The Anspachs had then be- 
gun to buy pictures for their Jersey City house, 
with the same delight in spending their newly 
acquired wealth in ornamentation — (for this was 
ten years before Wilhelmina brought John to live 
in New York) — that boys display in decorating the 
walls of a toy cabin in the woods, with prints of 
Indian fights cut from the tops of old boxes. 

Fishbourne walked round the room looking at the 
paintings. Suddenly he stopped before what pro- 
fessed to be an original crayon drawing by Rosa 
Bonheur, of two horses drinking at a watering- 
trough. 

“By Jove,” he thought, “this is the very picture 
that Lewis, the drawing-master, who boards at our 
house, pointed out to me the other night at the 
Academy of Fine Arts, as a fraud — a photograph of 
the original picture, touched up with Chinese white 
and India ink. Well, I wonder what the thing will 
sell for? Enough, I’ll bet, to pay my board bill for 
two or three years.” 

The auctioneer, with a red rose in his button- 
hole, paraded up and down, as picture after picture 
was put on the stand, under the fierce light of the 
gas reflector, and sold to the highest bidder. A 
Corot, a Dupr6, and a Daubigny were disposed 


FISHBOURNE BECAME LUCKY. 99 


of; the Corot to Mr. Anspach at eight thousand 
dollars. 

“Now, my friends,” said the auctioneer, as he 
twirled his eye-glasses round the end of his finger, 
“I want to show you a crayon by the great Rosa 
Bonheur,” and the counterfeit that Fishbourne had 
recognized, was brought forth and hidden under the 
blaze of the fiery reflector, by two solemn-looking 
gentlemen, wearing white gloves. 

“This great piece is by Rosa Bonheur,” cried the 
auctioneer. “See how natural the horses look; 
you can see the water running out of the corners of 
their mouths. It is better done than Bonheur’s 
celebrated ‘Horse Fair.’ I want to give you the 
worth of your money, gentlemen, and more too. 
The man who ornaments his parlors with this beau- 
tiful picture will get ten times its present cost, 
when Rosa Bonheur dies. And she’s old, gentle- 
men, she’s old. Buy your pictures while a great 
artist is alive; when he dies you’ll get a big profit 
on their cost. I never knew i| to fail. Meissonier 
is far below Bonheur as an artist. This little draw- 
ing is a mine of wealth for any one who buys it.” 

John Anspach bid $900. The auctioneer smiled 
and started the picture at that price. Fishbourne 
had taken his seat behind the Anspachs, and just as 
some one bid $50 more for the crayon drawing, he 
introduced himself to Mr. Anspach, and then told 
the story of the counterfeit crayon. By the time he 
had finished his tale, the price was soaring aloft 
under the auctioneer’s eloquence, at $1500. Ans- 


oo 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


pach, who had listened to Fishbourne attentively, 
rose up and elbowed his way through the crowd of 
elderly men and pretty women to the auctioneer’s 
desk, where, at a short distance, he solemnly in- 
spected the picture. 

“Mr. Crabbe,” he cried in a loud voice, “that 
crayon is a forgery. ’ ’ 

“Who says it is a forgery?” the auctioneer 
shouted with a pyroligneous look. 

“Mr. Anspach of Jersey City,” the banker an- 
swered. 

Then he stalked back, gave his arm to his wife, 
and motioned to Fishbourne to follow him. On 
the sidewalk he introduced Tom to Wilhelmina, and 
invited him to ride to Jersey City in the carriage 
with them and dine. 

The next day the newspapers announced, with a 
great flourish, the discovery of the forgery of a Rosa 
Bonheur crayon, by John A. Anspach, of Jersey 
City, the Wall Street banker and eminent collector 
of pictures. 

This was the beginning of Fishbourne’ s acquain- 
tance with the Anspachs, and the foundation of his 
success as a lawyer. The banker became his pat- 
ron, and helped him everywhere. 

Now Fishbourne was lucky and every one re- 
spected him for it, just as they did little Smith, with 
the narrow forehead and pug nose. 


CHAPTER XVII. 
wilhelmina’s dinner. 

F ISHBOURNE had gone seldom of late to balls, 
but the Anspach ball was the effort of his pat- 
ron’s wife; of course, he must go. 

He stopped one morning at the Anspachs’ on the 
way down town and left a list of his unmarried 
friends to be invited. As he went away, the foot- 
man came running to call him back from the street, 
and Mrs. Anspach met him in the vestibule, dressed 
in a gorgeous, yellow morning wrapper, with her hair 
in curl-papers. There she kept him on pins and 
needles a quarter of an hour, with her head poked 
out of the half-closed door, while she gave him 
instructions to be conveyed to Hopkins, the sexton 
of Grace Church, who was a most important func- 
tionary in carrying out her plans for the ball. 

This interview was observed from the second 
story window of the big house opposite, by the 
Misses Cans, two maiden ladies, the orphans of a 
well-known real estate owner, who had left them 
two millions apiec6. The comments of these ladies 
were scandalous, and no \yonder, for not only was 
the yellow morning wrapper shocking, but there 
was Wilhelmina’s handsome head in bold relief 
against the door, with her dark hair without a streak 

loi 


102 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE, 


of gray, becomingly done up in curl-papers, while 
both the Misses Gans wore wigs. 

A day or two afterwards, Fishbourne received an • 
invitation to dine with Mrs. Anspach, to meet Gen- 
eral Andersen and his daughter. He found Amory 
and Bill Anspach there. Bill, ignorant that there 
was to be a dinner party, had brought Editor Amory 
home sans ceremonie^ to have a talk with his father. 
John Anspach always held that an evening spent 
with an influential editor was not time thrown away. 

It was a little awkward for Amory when they 
talked about the ball, to which he had not been in- 
vited, but then he knew that no one was in the se- 
cret but himself and Mrs. Hardenberg, who had kept 
his name out of the list. 

Fishbourne sat next Jennie at dinner. He was 
delighted with her vivacity and intelligence. 

Jennie Andersen was a very bright, intelligent girl. 
Why should she not have been intelligent, even 
from the American view of the negro, that tolerates 
the race as free citizens and voters, only to make it 
the butt of ridicule and fraud — for Jennie had few 
drops of negro blood in her veins, fewer than either 
of the two great Frenchmen, whose names are 
household words, and who have charmed the world 
with play and novel for many a year. Yes, Jennie 
was very intelligent ; she had acquired a great deal 
of knowledge in four years time at Morristown. 
Not only a knowledge of books and music, but an 
acquaintance with the world. Her schoolmates 
were a hundred girls from all parts of the country. 


WILHELMINA'S DINNER. 


T03 


An American girl with courage to go to school five 
hundred miles from home, generally has a head 
pretty well stocked with ideas. To live in this 
little world four years, was almost an education in 
itself. To live in it, with the secret of her dis- 
graceful birth, made Jennie ambitious, and she 
improved every opportunity. 

Fishbourne had traveled in the South and was 
interested in the negro question. When dinner was 
nearly over, he turned from Jennie, and asked 
General Andersen, across the table, whether he 
thought the Virginia negro was improving. The 
General gave him a blank look, drank some claret, 
and made no answer. 

Elsie Anspach laughingly cried, “No one can 
make General Andersen talk about the negroes, 
Mr. Fishbourne. After dinner we will get Jennie 
to sing a song for us, that will- tell you about 
Virginia and the South.” 

Jennie laughed. “You foolish girl, what can a 
song teach Mr. Fishbourne?” 

John Anspach had been talking with Amory about 
the plan of the Enquirer Company to erect a huge 
building in Broadway. He heard the question 
that Fishbourne addressed to Andersen about the 
Virginia negro. 

“General,” he broke in, “I have always thought 
the negro question to be a practical question. When 
the negroes were slaves, we had to take care of them, 
and they bothered us much less than they do to-day. 
Now that they are free, we have only ourselves to 


104 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


look out for. This is a white man’s country and 
must be managed for the white man. It is like Pro- 
tection and Free Trade. Every man must look out 
for himself. I have got along under Protection ; I 
don’t look any farther than myself; I want to keep 
that which has benefited me. Experiments to 
benefit any other man, and that I think will not 
help me, when I am on a firm basis myself, are a 
humbug.” 

John Anspach, at his table, was a careless listener 
and a loud talker, addressing the whole company 
when it pleased him. His ignorance of the trouble 
that slavery gave the country before the days of free- 
dom, and his views of Protection, roused Amory, 
who was a bitter opponent of the high tariff, and he 
and Mr. Anspach were soon involved in a wordy 
discussion that turned the whole company into 
unwilling listeners. Neither the ladies, nor the 
General, knew anything of the subject, and Fish- 
bourne was almost as ignorant — looking on the 
tariff as an open question to be decided by the party 
that had the longest purse. 

Anspach was loud and positive in his assertions. 
Finally, he said, as he rose from the table; ‘‘Mr. 
Amory, I know your paper is a Free Trade sheet, 
and of course, you cannot take any other view than 
opposition to the Tariff. It is against your interests ; 
you are paid a good, round sum for your services 
by the English contributors to the American Cor- 
ruption Fund, The Englishmen would pay a big 


WILHELMINA'S DINNER. 105 

price to have our tariff taken off the goods they send 
to the United States.” 

By this time the ladies had left the room, and 
Amory cried out : ‘ ‘ Mr. Anspach, you are as narrow- 
minded about the Tariff and the unjust taxation 
under it, as you are ignorant of the misery that 
slavery brought the country for thirty years, before 
it plunged the nation in Civil War. Men like you 
enslaved men’s bodies, to be bought and sold. 
Slavery has passed away, and now you would sub- 
stitute for it, the industrial enslavement of the high 
tariff, that taxes and robs the farmer and the poor 
mechanic for the apparent benefit of a class of 
employers, too narrow-minded to see that the 
unjust tax borne by the farmer and mechanic, is in 
the end, almost as great an injury to the capi- 
talist.” 

“There now,” replied Anspach, pleased with 
the accusation that he had other men enslaved, 
“you are getting excited. Let us smoke a cigar. 
The Enquirer is a great newspaper.” 

Bill Anspach winked at General Andersen, and 
said : ‘ ‘ What foolishness all this argumen t is. When 
the time comes for deciding the Tariff question at 
election, the man who draws the biggest check wins 
the day, and we belong to the party that can draw 
big checks. How is it in Virginia, General, do 
you settle your elections in the same way?” 

“I am not a politician,” Andersen replied. 

When the gentlemen entered the drawing-room, 
after their cigars, they found Mrs. Hardenberg there, 


io6 not of her FATHER'S RACE. 

with Maud and Mortimor. She had just come in 
to spend the evening. 

“Now, Jennie, we want you to sing ‘Way down 
upon the Swanee River’ for us,” Elsie said. 

Jennie sat down at the piano and sang the plain- 
tive song, with a voice of remarkable sweetness and 
power. 

Fishbourne and Bill Anspach stood beside her. 

“Miss Swan, my teacher, does not like me to sing 
such simple music,’’ she said, when she stopped 
and looked up at Fishbourne. “But I like simple 
songs. What do you like, Mr. Anspach?’’ 

“I like a good opera,’’ Bill replied, “with plenty 
of pretty women and a big band.” 

“Do give us another song,” whispered Fish- 
bourne, and then Jennie sang the Scotch song, 
‘Oh, Poortith Cauld.’ The last two verses ran as 
follows: 

“ How blest the wild-wood Indian’s fate, 

He WOOS his simple dearie ; 

The silly bogles, wealth and state, 

Can never make him eerie. 

Oh, why should fate sic pleasure have, 

Life’s dearest bands untwining. 

Or why sae sweet a flower as love. 

Depend on fortune’s shining.” 

John Anspach got up and clapped his hands vio- 
lently. “That is splendid, Jennie. Wilhelmina, 
why did not Elsie learn to sing such songs?’’ 

“I have not the gift that Jennie has for singing,’’ 
Elsie replied. 


WILHELMINA ’5 DINNER. 107 

Mrs. Anspach looked severely at her daughter. 

Mrs. Hardenberg was about to ask Maud to 
play one of her best pieces, when she saw that Bill 
Anspach was tired of the music. In fact, Bill was 
yawning, and he whispered to Maud that Jennie’s 
Scotch song reminded him that people, who pro- 
fessed to despise wealth and fashion while they 
were in love, went about worshiping them immedi- 
ately after they were married. 

And now the young people, followed their fancies 
and settled in different corners of the room, with 
the inevitable result, that as there were three girls 
and four men, one girl was the happy possessor of 
two admirers. Mrs. Hardenberg left the drawing- 
room hoping that Maud would capture Bill An- 
spach. She went to the library with Mr. and Mrs. 
Anspach, where they found General Andersen sit- 
ting bolt upright asleep, with a half consumed cigar 
in his mouth. 

When Mrs. Hardenberg returned a short time 
afterwards, Elsie Anspach sat on a sofa in close con- 
versation with Mortimor. 

Jennie was entertaining Fishbourne, and Bill An- 
spach; while Maud, leaning against the piano, 
flirted with Amory. Mortimor was telling Elsie 
about a German the night before, and Maud, who 
had been thei*e too, was trying to name for Amory 
all the men who had contributed to the twenty 
favors she received. 

The Hardenbergs had made fair progress in three 
weeks’ time with the Anspachs ; Mrs. Hardenberg, 


I 08 not of her FATHER’S RACE. 

with father and mother, and Mortimor with Elsie. 
Elsie would listen by the hour to Mortimor’s non- 
sense. But alas, Bill always grew absent-minded 
when Maud sat beside him, and now as Mrs. Har- 
denberg looked in the drawing-room, she saw to 
her disgust. Bill and Fishbourne hanging on every 
word that came from Jennie Andersen’s mouth, 

“Ride,” said Jennie to Bill, “of course I 'Can 
ride. Ask Elsie if I didn’t leap my pony over a 
four-bar fence, the last day we rode with the mas- 
ter at Morristown?” 

“Now, Miss Jennie,” cried Bill, “I belong to a 
Fox Hunting Club on Long Island, and I would be 
delighted to take you down with me some day to 
have a run with the hounds. A great many pretty 
girls hunt with us.” 

Jennie promised to go. Fishbourne looked a lit- 
tle crestfallen. Jennie saw it all at a glance — Fish- 
bourne did not ride, and she felt sorry that she had 
given Bill an opportunity to air his horsemanship. 
As a matter of fact, while Bill did ride sometimes 
after a scent bag, he had never jumped his horse over 
a fence in his life, and nothing could induce him to 
risk his precious neck in such a dangerous amuse- 
merit. 

As it grew late, Amory was the first to go away, 
and then Maud felt de trop. But Jennie came to 
her rescue, and brought Anspach and Fishbourne 
over to the window, where they all four had a merry 
time, in spite of Bill’s vain attempts to appropriate 
Jennie. 


WILHELM IN A 'S DINNER. 109 

A foolish fellow Bill was with a girl. If he liked 
her he treated her as if he owned her, or could own 
her, if he chose to buy her, just as if she were a 
horse. 

Mrs. Hardenberg sat in the library, with Mr. 
and Mrs. Anspach and General Andersen. 

“What a lovely house this is,” she said, “and 
you have shown so much taste in the pictures. 
General, did you ever hear of Mr. Anspach’s detec- 
tion of the forged Bonheur crayon, some years 
ago?” And then she gave the General an account 
of Mr. Anspach’s triumph as an art critic, the day 
of the discovery of the forged Bonheur crayon. 

‘ ‘You do not have many fine pictures in Virginia, 
do you. General?” she asked. 

“No,” replied Andersen, thinking of his log 
cabin and Lucy, “we have the simple tastes of an 
aristocracy. Our houses are large and roomy, but 
we live without luxury.” 

“Ah, General, but you all worship New York, 
where the great millionaire merchants are; they 
are the aristocracy of America. My husband’s 
ancestors were the old Knickerbockers. You know 
he is descended from the Dutch settlers of New 
York, just as the Anspachs are descended from the 
Dutch settlers of Pennsylvania. But the Knicker- 
bockers never dreamed of such lovely surroundings 
as Mrs. Anspach has” ; and so she ran on. 

When Wilhelmina spoke of Elsie’s leaving school, 
Mrs. Hardenberg broke out again, “Elsie is such 
an unaffected beauty; I think the friendship be- 


I lO 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


tween her and your sweet daughter is so touching, 
General. How it does develop character to send 
girls away from home ! I wish that Maud could 
have gone to Morristown. But I could not spare 
her, she is such a help to me. She writes all my 
letters, and is a perfect encyclopedia of social infor- 
mation.* What advantages our children enjoy, com- 
pared with the opportunities of their parents’ youth ! 
Great paintings to ennoble their minds; lectures 
on all subjects to instruct them, and refined society 
to polish their manners.” 

This reminded Wilhelmina that, at Elsie’s age, 
she had spent every Monday and Tuesday at the 
family wash-tub. 

Did John and Wilhelmina succumb to all this 
flattery? No, indeed, they understood what it was, 
but it was a gratification nevertheless, inasmuch as 
it was a tribute paid to their importance. 

Mortimor Hardenberg had carried Bill Anspach 
and Fishbourne off to the Club. It was eleven 
o’clock; the carriages were at the door, and the 
ladies were all leaving the library to go to the dress- 
ing-room, when there was a noise in the hall. 

At the foot of the stairs a servant told Mrs. An- 
spach, that a lady and gentleman were in the draw- 
ing-room, who had said they were her brother and 
sister from Reading. Just then the door opened, 
and a ruddy-faced woman, the picture of robust 
health rushed out, and greeted Mrs. Anspach affec- 
tionately with a kiss. 

“Well, Wilhelmina, we’ve found-you at last.” 


WILHELMINA'S DINNER. 


HI 


She was followed by a fat man, with little eyes, 
that looked like pin-holes in a ball of putty, who 
approached Mr. Anspach timidly. 

“How are you, Gus Engles? I’m glad to see you, 
Carrie,” Anspach said, and gave the man his hand 
warmly. 

How much alike the sisters were, in spite of the 
contrast of Mrs. Engles’s cheap bonnet and ring- 
decked brown hands, with Wilhelmina’s faultless 
attire. 

But Mrs. Anspach seemed turned to stone, her 
face grew pale, and her nose grew red. She looked 
at her sister from head to foot, in the presence o^^ 
her guests, as she would have regarded an impostor 
from the street. As Mrs. Engles went on in con- 
fusion to relate that they were at French’s hotel 
in the Bowery, and had lost their way in trying 
to find her sister’s house, the enraged Wilhel- 
mina hustled man and wife into the drawing-room, 
beckoned Anspach to -follow, and slammed the 
door. 

Andersen thought to himself, “When I lived in 
a log cabin and my black Lucy was alive, I never 
had as hard a meeting with my white relations on 
the road as that,’’ 

“Father,” said Jennie, on the steps, “what a 
beast Mrs. Anspach is to behave so cruelly to her 
own sister.” • 

In the carriage, on the way home, Mrs. Harden- 
berg leaned back and broke forth in peals of laugh- 
ter, in which her daughter joined. 


112 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


Maud said: “I do hope Mortimor will not marry 
Elsie Anspach. Just think of our having such 
vulgar connections as that nasty man and woman. 
The man smelled of stale beer, and was saving the 
stump of a cigar in his left hand.’’ 

Mrs. Hardenberg stopped laughing. “Maud, 
don’t be a fool,’’ she replied. “What harm can 
these people do to us, or to Mrs. Anspach. The 
Anspachs will be leaders in society. They have 
not yet had time to teach their relations that 
noblesse oblige., and that people of lofty position 
must cut loose from their common relatives. I’ll 
warrant, from Mrs. Anspach’s manner, that her 
sister will never visit her again. We only saw the 
chance exposure of a hideous sore that will soon be 
cured. The Engles are not half so bad as Mrs. 
Goldstick’s sister, who kept a cigar store in Ninth 
Street, five years ago, and was the dirtiest looking 
woman I ever saw. She may be living there still, 
but Mrs. Goldstick does hot know her, and no one 
is aware of her existence. The Goldsticks are the 
first people in New York to-day. You know we 
heard the Rev. Mr. Goldstick preach his first ser- 
mon in Christ Church last Sunday. I am sure I 
hope, that Mortimor will marry Elsie, She is a 
lovely girl, and I would be proud to see Bill in love 
with you, my darling.’’ 

“That will never be,’’ answered Maud, “he does 
not like me.’’ 

They were quiet for some minutes, and Mrs. 
Hardenberg nodded half asleep, when Maud said : 


WILHELsMINA'S DINNER. 1 13 

“I do not like those Andersens; Jennie has a glib 
tongue and every one listens to her. What is the 
reason they have such a hold on the Anspachs?” 

“Through the Bank, my dear,” her mother 
answered. “Your father says Andersen has a great 
deal of money. I do not understand the General 
yet. Jennie is very ambitious. They seem reserved 
for Southern people. I suspect the old General to 
be a humbug — so puffed up inside with the wind of 
vanity, that he does not dare open his mouth for fear 
of a collapse. He claims too much with his gravity. 
Some one says, ‘That the essence of gravity is design 
and deceit— a taught trick to gain the credit of the 
world for more than a man is worth.’ You must be 
very polite to them though, they are friends of the 
Anspachs. ’’ 

Mrs. Hardenberg was tired; she had spent the 
morning in a lawyer’s office with several ladies and 
gentlemen, listening to the report of one of her 
societies. Then she took lunch with her friend, 
Mrs. Twitched, way up-town in the Nevada Flats, 
and in the afternoon, paid visits in a hired hack 
till dinner time. She and Maud dined at home, 
and afterwards took Mortimor to the Anspachs. 
This was the work of an ordinary day for her. 
Eleven o’clock always found her worn out. 

She was not too tired, however, that night, to wake 
up, when her husband came home at one o’clock 
smelling of cigars and punch, and ask him, from 
what place in Virginia the Andersens came. 

“Oh, confound the Andersens!’’ replied Harden* 


1 14 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

berg. “I told you the other day that the General 
was rich. No one knows or cares where he came 
from. Who has time to inquire about a man’s 
antecedents? His bank account is his history, for 
the Anspachs and for every one else. The General 
is a pompous old fool. He is learning to speculate 
in stocks, and Bill Anspach must be making a great 
deal of money out of him, for he trots after him, and 
makes me trot after him all the time down-town. I 
hope Bill will get all the money he has soon, and 
then I shall be rid of him.” 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE ANSPACH BALL. 

I T was the night of the Anspach costume ball. 

Mrs. Anspach stood at the drawing-room door — ■ 
Queen Elizabeth of England. A long, regal train 
of brocade, striped with gold and silver, trailed be- 
hind her. The front of her dress was satin, heavily- 
embroidered with gold ; her shapely neck was sur- 
rounded with a high ruff, and on her head rested a 
red toquet, dotted with pearls. Her black eyes 
shone, and her cheeks glowed with a lustre all their 
own. As John led her forth, he looked at her with 
admiration and whispered, “Wilhelmina, you are 
a queen now. Who would have imagined this the 
first time we met, when I weighed out half a pound 
of tea for you in the store at Reading.” 

John, as a Venetian ambassador, wore a red coat 
with a white waistcoat and white satin breeches, 
and Wilhelmina, glancing at the little sword at his 
side, answered, “I am a queen and you are a con- 
queror.” 

But Wilhelmina looked a trifle too stubby for a 
queen, though why should not queens be short as 
well as other people? And John did not wear his 
aword with the grace popularly supposed to belong 
to a conqueror, and it was soon laid aside. 


Ii6 not of her FATHER’S RACE. 

Bill Anspach came in dressed as a Spanish bull- 
fighter, in black and yellow, with a blue sash, and 
went pacing up and down, paying no attention to 
the arrivals. 

Mrs. Anspach’s flushed cheeks betrayed her men- 
tal agitation. When a newly fledged general first 
commands in battle, it is with no purpose of 
beginning a long career of success that he hopes for 
victory. He aims to succeed then and there, with- 
out a thought of the future. But Wilhelmina 
deliberately looked beyond her first battle. A vic- 
tory was to be the beginning of a series of suc- 
cesses without end. How momentous then, the 
issue of the night ! 

The first floor of the Anspach mansion was beau- 
tifully decorated for the ball. The hall was lined 
with rare plants, and a Flemish tapestry covered 
the side of the stairway below the top of the balus- 
trade. From the richly painted ceiling of the ball- 
room, brocade hangings of blue, red and gold, fell 
half-way to the floor, covering the wall wherever 
there was space not filled by paintings or mirrors. 
In one corner was a fine bronze Hermes, and the 
space between the windows was occupied by a mar- 
ble Venus, that had cost a fabulous sum in Rome. 
The pillars supporting the ceiling were wreathed 
with laurel ; tall flowering plants, white, red and yel- 
low, filled the corners and niches of the great rooms. 
The full effect of the rich coloring of the walls, in 
contrast w'.th the dark polished panels below the 
hangings, was brought out by the brilliant light of 


THE ANSPACH BALL. 


7 


many electric candelabra held by bronze fig- 
ures. 

The house was thronged. Strains of delicious 
music floated from a garden of flowers in the hall. 
Kings and queens, courtiers and maids of honor, 
armed knights, men and women of all times and 
countries met each other. Here walked a Chinese 
woman, in a black dress, a mass of gold, pink and 
green embroidery, her mantle of bright, red satin, 
there, a Joan of Arc, in a blue velvet jacket with a 
white shield embroidered with golden fleur-de-lis. 
Mary Queen of Scots, in a dress of white and gold 
brocade with a crown of pearls, stood beside a lovely 
Greek, in a pink dress with drapery of green and 
sandals on her feet, both talking to a Knight Tem- 
plar in chain armor and a white cloak. 

On the pavement and in the street, a dense 
throng of people had collected, who loudly com- 
mented on many of the cosfiimes, as the carriages 
deposited their occupants at the awning door. 

“Here she comes,” cried a newsboy, as Mrs. 
Hardenberg stepped forth in a Louis XVIth dress, 
with powdered hair and a head-dress of feathers. 
“Here she comes! the Squaw of Sheba; her chief 
must have been off on a raid, and brought her some 
war scalps and she’s wearing ’em.” 

Mrs. Hardenberg dropped her ermine cape, and 
some one called out, “Pick up your blanket, 
Squaw of Sheba, you will catch your death of 
cold without it.” 

Mr. Hardenberg was dressed in a full suit of 


Ii8 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

armor, and they shouted that he would make a good 
figure for a cigar store. 

There was a laugh from the crowd when General 
Andersen alighted, in the costume of a Monk, with 
a cowl and long, white gown, embroidered with a 
red cross. “Here comes the Pope,” a man cried. 
“Hurrah, for the Pope of Rome,” they yelled. 

The young ladies were all respected, and passed 
in without comment, but nearly every one else 
received a share of ridicule. 

And now the ball was at its height, and joy and 
hubbub were unconfined. 

How beautiful Jennie Andersen was, as tall Brun- 
hilde, in white cashmere, with a silver cuirass and 
silver helmet with heron’s wings. Her first part- 
ner was Fishbourne, a Spanish Count. 

As they whirled round the room, they met Elsie 
Anspach, as Juliet, in pale green, dancing with Morti- 
mer Hardenberg, all m red, a little devil. Maud 
was waltzing too, as Starlight Night, dressed in 
black tulle, studded with tiny gold stars, a pearl 
crescent in her hair, and a white rose at her breast. 
She had captured Bill Anspach, the bull-fighter. 

Judge Muldoon, dressed as Charles the First, . 
with a violet cloak, lined with white satin, russet 
boots and a broad hat with plumes, entered, fol- 
lowed by three gentlemen in the full dress of Eng- 
lish Army officers. 

Mr. Muldoon had been elected to his office, by 
dint of a considerable expenditure of money, includ- 
ing a round subscription to the New York fund for 


THE ANSPACH BALL. 119 

advancing the cause of Home Rule in Ireland. 
But, now, as a Judge and a club-man, he proudly- 
embraced the opportunity of introducing two aris- 
tocratic anti-Home-Rulers and their fellow-officer, 
an Indian Prince, to American society. High posi- 
tion has its obligations. 

Approaching Mrs. Anspach, the Hon. Mr. Mul- 
doon presented his three friends, Lieutenant- 
General Sir John Hill; Colonel Trelawney and 
His 'Highness, Prince Victor Dhuleep Singh of the 
Punjaub, all of the British Army. ‘ ‘Not in costume, 
but in the dress of their rank,” he shouted above 
the music. 

‘‘A very remarkable young gentleman the Prince 
is,” the Judge continued, almost poking Mrs. An- 
spach’s eyes out with the wide brim of his hat, as he 
bent forward. ‘‘He belongs to an old family in 
India,” and shouting louder still, ‘‘his father owned 
the Kohinoor diamond and — ” but just then a 
waltzing couple bumped the Judge out of breath, 
and he and the Indian Prince and the Lieutenant- 
General, were swept away by the crowd of dancers. 

Who was in the great throng, that danced, or 
stalked about and gazed? Every fish that the last 
freshet in the turbulent stream of New York’s 
trade and speculation and politics, had left in a 
comfortable nook, where the sun shone and food 
was plenty. 

The Mayor was there; and the great dry-goods 
merchant Schloss, promotor of the American inter- 
oceanic canal in Nicaragua, with his two beautiful 


120 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


daughters. There were many presidents of rail- 
road companies, and scores of smart organizers of 
companies and trusts, for putting up the price of 
this necessary article, or putting down the price of 
that necessary article, of universal consumption by 
mankind. There were politicians, and orators, 
whose platitudes passed for wit with the witless 
many. Bankers, and brokers, and doctors, and 
lawyers there were, without number. And then, of 
the rank and file of New York life, swarmed hun- 
dreds of men and women of fortune, whose aim in 
this world was to be down for every ball and dinner 
of consequence ; and many pretty girls, whose 
fathers and mothers, forgotten or unknown, had 
not been invited, and husbaads and wives whose 
partners in life had been similarly neglected. 

Man longs for inequality ; he loves to turn his 
back on those beneath him, while he fixes his eyes 
on those above him. But there was no chance for 
inequality at the ball. All looked alike in costume. 
It was the next morning, when the newspapers gave 
the names of the ladies with the cost of their dresses 
and diamonds, that the only claim of Mrs. This or 
Mrs. That to distinction was seen. 

After the crush in the supper room, the German 
began. All balls are pretty much the same. Plenty 
of tall, handsome women, ugly little men, and 
champagne till two o’clock. After two o’clock, 
the handsome women look handsomer, and the 
men hide their soiled gloves in their coat-tail 
pockets. 


THE ANSPACH BALL. 


121 


Maud smiled sweetly at Jennie, as she passed out 
to the carriage. Maud had been told by Bill An- 
spach, that she and Jennie were the two prettiest 
women in the room. In some way Maud had 
caught Bill’s passing fancy that night, and he had 
bestowed himself on her a great deal. It was the 
first and the last time he ever did so. 

Mortimor Hardenberg lingered with Elsie Ans- 
pach till the great throng had gone. So late was he 
that he found Mr. and Mrs. Anspach in the ball- 
room, giving the list of names and an account of the 
ball, to a dozen reporters. 

For some time, Mortimor had been making vio- 
lent love to Elsie, but the Anspachs were so much 
absorbed in themselves, that they had not yet ob- 
served it. As Mortimor went away that night he 
was wondering, with his hands in his pockets, what 
Mr. Anspach and his wife would say when they 
discovered what he was doing. 

The next day the newspapers contained a four 
column account of the ball with a list of the distin- 
guished names, beginning with the Indian Prince 
Dhuleep Singh and the British General, Sir John 
Hill. The costumes were described in detail, and 
the beauty of Miss Elsie Anspach, as Juliet, was par- 
ticularly dwelt upon. 

“There,” said John to Wilhelmina, after she had 
finished reading the story to him at the break- 
fast table, “if that is not a good advertisement for 
your society business, I am no judge, and it only 
cost me twenty-five dollars for each newspaper. 


122 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


Such a notice of a business down town would 
cost much more.” 

The ball was the beginning of a round of gayeties, 
for now both the Anspachs and the Andersens were 
in the current of society, and .entered with the 
Hardenbergs into all the pleasures of gay life. 
Opera parties, dinners, and balls, kept them busy. 

Fishbourne and Bill Anspach were caught in the 
whirl and met Jennie and Maud everywhere. 

“Bill Anspach is going out at last,” the world 
said ; “he is in love with the Southern beauty, Jen- 
nie Andersen.” No one noticed Fishbourne’s 
devotion to Jennie, which was quite as marked. 

It was in an elegant suite of rooms on the Broad- 
way front of the Albemarle Hotel, that General 
Andersen and Jennie received their friends on 
reception days, and thither flocked every one in so- 
ciety, who paid court to the rising star of Anspach, 
for Andersen and Anspach were one, and Mrs. Har- 
denberg was their Urania. 

“What are we coming to in New York society?” 
said Mrs. J. Tremaine Reed, who was still strug- 
gling to excite people’s envy by her dress and posi- 
tion in the world, in spite of her husband’s failure 
in grain speculations, and who had been left off the 
Anspachs’ invitation list by Mrs. Hardenberg in 
revenge for an old slight. “What are we coming 
to, my dear?” she said to her friend, Mrs. T. Barclay 
Collins. ‘ ‘Did you read the account in the Tribune 
of the ball at Delmonico’s last night? Those vul- 
gar, Pennsylvania Dutch people, the Anspachs, were 


THE ANSPACH BALL. 


123 


at the head of the list, and the Andersens next. Mrs. 
Anspach’s diamonds were called tremendous, and 
her fat little daughter was described as a great 
beauty.” 

But Mrs. T. Barclay Collins had been invited to 
the ball, although she and her daughters were not 
what they had been four years before, and she re- 
plied with a smile, “What better combination could 
there be, Mrs. Reed? The Anspachs are immensely 
rich, and the Andersens besides being wealthy are 
Southerners — the best blood in the country.” 

In all the turmoil and excitement of her gay life 
did Jennie remember Miss Gillingham? The chroni- 
cler of the events of the life of Jennie Andersen 
must confess, that she had tried to forget the woman 
to whom she owed everything beyond her existence, ^ 
and her father’s discovery of the grave-yard treasure. 
And was this surprising? The remembrance of 
Virginia was a shame to Jennie Andersen. She 
and her father often spoke of their home to strang- 
ers, but with an assumption of facts, which while not 
a direct lie, described the surroundings of General 
Andersen’s early youth. 

So it was that Jennie’s fictitious home became her 
only recollection of Virginia, while her real home, 
was a terrible secret to be forgotten. Miss Gilling- 
ham, her teacher in the negro school, was a part of 
this secret. 

Jennie had kept up her correspondence with the 
teacher conscientiously, while she was at Morristown, 
and after her coming to New York a few letters 


124 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

passed between them, but the correspondence soon 
ceased. 

This was Miss Gillingham’s last letter: 

“You write so seldom, that I must believe it is 
painful for you to recall your life in Virginia, but 
my dear child, neither you nor I can forget each 
other. 

“I want you to put this letter of mine away and 
keep it, to remind you of my love for you, should 
you ever need me. 

“You are in the midst of a life that is known to 
me only at second hand, through the books I have 
read. But the world is pretty much the same w'here- 
ever the sun shines, and I am sure that the tempta- 
tions you will meet in New York, are those that 
would assail you everywhere. Rely on yourself. 
Be honest, be suspicious, be discreet. Remember 
, that vanity and display lead you into temptation, and 
excite the hatred of your companions. You seek 
their love, not their enmity. Remember our Sun- 
days at the Manor. Remember that Christ, the man 
with the eternal heart, is as near you in the roar 
of the great city, as he was in the seclusion of the 
pines, where we so often talked on the way home 
from school, of your growing up to be a teacher 
with me. 

“What vanity it was in me to think that I could 
shape your life in my own course. 

“Jennie, I know you to be a good girl. God 
made me the means of developing His gifts to you. 
Do not let anything swerve your convictions of right 
and wrong. Never forget that you have me always 
to come to, and whether you come flushed with 
pride of life, or in sorrow and suffering, my love 
will be the same.” 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE STOCK SPECULATOR. 

B ill ANSPACH sat at a huge rosewood desk, 
in a mahogany chair with an ugly carved 
back. He was shut up in his private room, in front 
of the Wall Street Bank, with General Andersen. 

The General stood at the Stock telegraph ma- 
chine, letting the tape run through his long fingers, 
as the quotations were printed under his eyes. 
Tick, tick, tick, they came, with the same regularity 
that his heart drove the blood through his thin 
frame. 

Bill was signing letters that had been brought to 
him in a pile by a clerk, and he watched Andersen 
out of the corner of his eye. 

“What do you think of the future course of the 
Stock market. General?” he asked. 

“I think Til go over and take a look at what is 
going on in the Stock Exchange,” replied Ander- 
sen, avoiding the question, as he stalked noiselessly 
away. 

“Confound the fellow,” thought Bill, “I believe 
he is buying stocks secretly for a rise, over the way 
at Harding’s, and he wants to make me believe that 
he is selling through our brokers for a fall.” 

Mortimor Hardenberg sat near the door match- 


125 


126 not of her FATHER'S RACE. 

ing half-dollars with a friend — an intellectual diver- 
sion that occupied much of his time down town 
when his father’s business was dull. 

“Now, I’ve won ten dollars from you, and I’ll 
match you whether we’ll make it twenty or noth- 
ing,’’ he said to his friend. The coins were laid 
down and Mortimor won. 

Just then Andersen passed them. He was smil- 
ing to himself. 

“There goes General Andersen,’’ Mortimor said, 
“he is laughing. If we only knew whether he is 
buying or selling stocks, we could make ten dollars 
by selling the secret to the news agency. I’ll follow 
him and see where he goes.’’ 

Picking up his winnings, Mortimor dogged Ander- 
sen to one of his favorite haunts, a broker’s office 
at the top of a high Wall Street building. 

Andersen brought much ready money with him to 
New York from Virginia. He had the nerve of the 
experienced gambler. Risks did not frighten him, 
losses did not discourage him, gains did not elate 
him. His wild speculations, favored by the smiles 
of fortune, had more than quintupled his wealth. 

No orie but himself knew how much money he 
had, his mouth was always sealed; he made himself 
a mystery, and men inevitably exaggerated his 
possessions. 

The crowd that dabbled in stocks regarded him 
with awe. 

‘ ‘ There goes General Andersen, ’ ’ they whispered, 
as he entered his cab on the way up town. “His 


THE STOCK SPECULATOR. 


127 


brokers have bought 20,000 shares of Delaware and 
Lackawanna stock to-day. He is worth $10,000,- 
000, at least.” 

John Anspach’s back room in the Bank was 
Andersen’s office. In the Banker’s company he 
fell in with hundreds of people who clustered round 
the money-making Anspach, as insects buzz round 
a lusty sunflower. Organizers of schemes, politi- 
cians, speculators in stocks, and grain and real- 
estate — men of all pursuits and no steady occupa- 
tion, with plans only needing money to secure 
untold wealth, were coming and going all day long. 

Andersen listened to their schemes and went his 
own way. If money were to be lost, he would lose it 
himself. No one but his brokers knew when he 
bought stocks, or when he sold them. 

Old Little, the member of Congress, a lawyer with 
a reputation gained by the size of his charges, who 
was employed by Anspach and his friends, to watch 
legislation affecting their railroad enterprises, and 
point out purchasable votes to his clients, bowed 
obsequiously to Andersen in vain. The General 
had no need of legal advice; he was a gambler 
pure and simple, and fortune was favoring him. 

Bill Anspach watched the Southerner with wonder. 
“The sheer force of luck in Andersen’s favor is 
wonderful,” he said to his father, “but I am afraid 
he may involve himself and us, in schemes of which 
we know nothing. He has relations with many 
people in Wall Street, and I cannot follow his 
tracks.” 


128 NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 


The old man smiled at his son’s fears that Ander- 
sen would involve John A. Anspach. He said, “You 
see that the Bank’s loans of money to him are amply 
secured by good collateral. Never mind what 
business relations he has with other people. We 
are making a great deal of money out of his custom. ’ ’ 

The day that this conversation took place John 
was giving a dinner, the thoughts of which had made 
his heart swell with pride for weeks. It was a. sym- 
posium of statesmanship and finance. A selection 
of some of the best advertised men of New York. 
At John’s right sat the Hon. Thomas Huckleberry, 
and then came Schloss, the dry-goods merchant, and 
Hopkins, the banker. Then, an editor, and Lar- 
kins and White, real estate owners, and Howard 
and Williams, the politicians, with General Ander- 
sen between them. Beside Bill sat the well-known 
clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Spriggs. 

The most distinguished person at the table, in 
John Anspach’s opinion, was the Hon. Thomas 
Huckleberry. 

How Huckleberry originated, no one could tell, 
and no one thought of asking. To be Huckleberry, 
was enough to be anything great, although, nomi- 
nally, he was a lawyer. A man he was, who lived 
by politics and speculations; who traveled wher- 
ever profitable company and good hotels were to be 
found, and where after-dinner speeches could be 
made. He had filled public posts both big and 
little, and was always a persistent office seeker. His 
last success, was as a self-appointed delegate to the 


THE STOCK SPECULATOR. 


129 


Paris Conference on the Isthmian Canal question. 
Since that time, the world had been periodically 
informed by him in published letters, of the rapid 
progress of the Panama Canal, and of the daily 
doings in Paris of M. de Lesseps, the distinguished 
promoter of inter-oceanic canals, for all of which the 
old Frenchman paid him well. 

Huckleberry’s public services, beginning as Minis- 
ter to Guatemala, were written out in full in Apple- 
ton’s Biographical Dictionary, and actually occu- 
pied as much space as the Life of Abraham Lin- 
coln or William E. Gladstone. To move about the 
world and be distinguished, to speak in New York 
of his friend Wales, and of his intimacy with the 
British aristocracy, and to talk as a Democrat of the 
Democrats in London, was Huckleberry’s way, and 
he had succeeded. 

It was a grand dinner. John Anspach, as has 
been remarked before, was inclined to be of a retro- 
spective turn of mind on such occasions. Looking 
at the painted ceilings of the spacious room and 
the table loaded with silver and adorned with 
masses of flowers, brilliant in the glow of elec- 
tric lights, John contrasted his situation with the 
old dinners in the back room of the grocery store, 
where he was repeatedly interrupted in his meals 
to wait on customers. If Wilhelmina had been 
with him, his mind would have been relieved by 
calling her attention to the contrast, but, as it was, 
he fell to dreaming of the past. He was about to 
pinch his leg to rouse himself, when an ill-concealed 


130 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

stare of amusement from Huckleberry recalled 
him, and he discovered that he was shoveling peas 
into his mouth with a knife, as had been his habit 
twenty-five years before in Reading. 

The speeches of the great occasion all appeared 
the next morning in the entire Press of the city. 
Huckleberry gave an account of his efforts to pre- 
vail on the Government to establish a college for 
the education of young men for diplomatic life. 

The clergyman spoke of the magnificent gifts of 
his friends to various objects for the public ±)enefit ; 
and Williams pointed out the high morals of Repub- 
licanism as compared with Democracy, alluding to 
the gentlemen present as leaders of Reform and 
Republicanism. “Burke’s remark on the divorce 
of fame and virtue in the leaders of party, will nat 
apply to the leaders of our great party,” he ex- 
claimed, “for where in the world can one find fame 
so dependent on public virtue, as among Republican 
leaders.” Williams said this, with a knowledge of 
John Anspach’s contribution of twenty-five thou- 
sand dollars to buy an election for his party, a con- 
tribution that far exceeded any single gift of John 
to a good object. But then, away from the dinner- 
table, Williams would have said, that John was not 
a party leader. 


CHAPTER XX. 

THE RUNAWAY MATCH. 

M ORTIMOR HARDENBERG’S love affair 
with Elsie made itself suddenly apparent to the 
Anspachs, and they were up in arms against it at 
once. John and Wilhelmina had looked on Elsie’s 
heart as a thing that would be disposed of in accor- 
dance with their plan of life. They insensibly rea- 
soned, that as the change from poverty to riches 
had given a hard, worldly tone to all their impulses, 
the possession of wealth would engender the same 
calculating spirit in the young, and they expected 
that when Elsie fell in love, it would be with some 
one, who would gratify their desire for advancement 
in life. 

When they discovered what had been going on 
between Elsie and Mortimor, it made a great com- 
motion. 

“He hasn’t a cent,’’ John said to his wife; “he 
will never get ahead, he is just like his father. His 
aristocracy is no use to us now, we have had it our- 
selves these three months. We gave the Harden- 
bergs a big return, Wilhelmina, for the start they 
gave you in society, and I am not going to have a 
family of paupers hung round our necks by that 
silly girl, Elsie. Now, go and see Mrs. Harden- 
131 


132 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE, 

berg, and tell her we never want to see one of them 
in the house again, and that they will not get a cent 
from me.” 

Wilhelmina put on her bonnet, and passing the 
weeping Elsie without a word, she walked swiftly 
to the Hardenbergs, filled to the brim with all man- 
ner of pride and insolence. 

Fortunate Mrs. Hardenberg! She had gone that 
very day with her husband to Newport for a week, 
to puzzle over the problem of hiring a villa when 
Wall Street was dull. 

But Maud was at home and Wilhelmina fell on 
her like a tigress. She accused ‘the Hardenbergs, 
one and all, of plotting to carry olf Elsie’s affec- 
tions. 

“And now we have found you out in time,” she 
cried, and shaking her finger, “That fellow Morti- 
mor shall never look at Elsie again.” 

Maud wept, and between her sobs, vowed that she 
and all the family were ignorant of what had been 
going on between Mortimor and Elsie. She did 
not fight back. She only cried and cried, till Mrs. 
Anspach and her wrath, were swept away by 
tears. 

When Mrs. Anspach had gone, Maud’s tears 
were dry in an instant. She called a messenger boy, 
and in half-an-hour she had brought Mortimor home 
from his dinner at the Club. Then they sat down 
together, and Maud wrote an account of the situa- 
tion of affairs to her mother. 

“I have a great mind to run away with the girl 


THE RUNA WA Y MA TCH 


133 


and marry her right out of hand,” Mortimor sud- 
denly interrupted. ‘‘Last night when old Anspach 
put me out of the house, she said she would go 
with me anywhere in the world.” 

‘‘Why don’t you do it, Mortimor?” answered 
Maud coolly, looking up from her letter. “It would 
all be settled then.” 

“By Jove! I will,” cried Mortimor. “Elsie is 
to meet me, after she leaves the Andersens to-mor- 
row morning at half-past nine o’clock. I will do 
it then.” 

As Maud wrote she watched Mortimer’s face 
out of the corner of her sharp eye, and she made up 
her mind that he meant what he had said. He 
was bold enough to elope with Elsie Anspach. 

When the letter was finished she looked at him 
meaningly, and said: “Well, then, Mortimor, I will 
not mail this letter till to-morrow morning, and then 
mother will be able to say, she was ignorant of what 
was going on till after you were married. Now, you 
stay at home to-night, and have your wits about 
you to-morrow. If you are smart, you can easily 
persuade Elsie to run away with you.” 

“Where shall I run away to?” Mortimor asked 
sheepishly. “You will have to give me some money, 
Maud. I haven’t five dollars.” 

It was after one o’clock when Mortimor left his 
sister and went to bed. She had given him his in- 
structions. 

Just about that hour, John Anspach and his wife, 
after a solemn conference, had settled the question, 


134 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE 

when Wilhelmina should take Elsie to Europe for a 
six months’ trip. 

It was to be on Wednesday, of the following 
week. Elsie had gone crying to her room hours 
before, having been informed of the contemplated 
voyage. 

The next morning, bright and early, Mortimor sat 
at the breakfast table with Maud, and dispatched a 
messenger to the office, to say that he was ill ajid 
would not be down-town. 

Maud packed his handbag for him, gave him 
fifty dollars, all the money her mother had left her, 
and patting him on the back, pushed him out of the 
front door. Then she mailed the letter to her 
mother. 

Mortimor walked slowly up Fifth Avenue, revolv- 
ing his plans and Maud’s advice in his mind. 
She had said to him before they parted, “Once mar- 
ried to Elsie you are a rich man. If you delay they 
will send her away from ygu. When you are mar- 
ried, mother can soon make up with the Anspachs 
for you.” 

Mortimor’s plan was as follows: He sometimes 
ran out on the Pennsylvania Railroad for a few days, 
to shoot snipe on the Jersey Meadows. On these 
excursions, Pinebrook, a town on the Raritan River, 
two hours’ drive from Redbank, was his abiding- 
place, and there he had made many acquaintances. 
Strange to say, one of his best friends in Pinebrook 
was the Methodist minister, who often joined the 
crowd that surrounded him in the evening at the 


THE RUN A IV A Y MA TCH. 135 

little inn, listening to his gasconade about city- 
life. 

To-day Pinebrook was his destination — if he could 
persuade Elsie to run away with him, and he was 
confident he could. The Methodist minister would 
tie the knot, and then he trusted to Maud’s assur- 
ance, that his mother would gain him forgiveness 
from the Anspachs. 

So absorbed did Mortimor become, in thinking 
over the route to Pinebrook, and what he would say 
and do, when he reached there with Elsie, that he 
forgot all about Elsie herself, and v;ent walking 
along swinging his bag, with his head high in the 
air — past the Albemarle Hotel and past Elsie, who 
had just come downstairs from the Andersens, and 
stood on the steps of the ladies’ entrance staring at 
him. As he passed her Elsie called out, ‘ ‘ Mortimor, 
Mortimor, wont you speak to me?” Looking back 
over his shoulder he saw her. 

An ardent lover in distress, caught running away 
from the girl he proposed to marry, might be ex- 
pected to display some confusion, but Mortimor 
turned unabashed, and bowed gracefully to his 
sweetheart. 

‘T was dreaming of you, Elsie,” he said. 

“I believe you,” she laughed, “for you certainly 
were walking in your sleep. You stared right in my 
face and passed me,” and then she said in an under- 
tone, as they walked on together, “Mortimor, father 
says I must go abroad with mother next week. 
Jennie is going down to speak to mother this after- 


136 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


noon, in hopes to delay it for a week, but I do not 
believe she will succeed; they are determined to 
separate us at once.” 

When Mortimor heard this, he stopped short with 
a gesture of despair, and a big man, who was lumber- 
ing along down-town, ran against him and smashed 
a lighted cigar to pieces on his hat. Mortimor 
stepped aside, removed his hat, and while he was 
brushing it off, he said, “Elsie, there is but one 
thing for us to do, go right away and get married,” 
and he put on his hat, and looked coolly into poor 
Elsie’s crimson face. 

“Oh, Mortimor,” she whispered, “can we do 
that? What would everyone say?” 

“Why should we care what people say?” Morti- 
mor replied, waxing warm. “You told me you 
would go anywhere in the world with me yesterday, 
and has not your father forbidden me to speak to 
you again? and is he not going to send you far away 
to sea — to separate us forever and forever?” 

They were silent for half a block, and then Elsie 
said in a low voice: “I will do whatever you think 
is right, Mortimor.” 

Elsie’s sudden consent almost took Mortimor’s 
breath away. He put his arm through hers. “I’ll 
get a cab for us. ” 

“But where are we to go?” Elsie asked anx- 
iously. 

“Don’t you worry, dear, I have the plan all 
arranged. We will ride down to the Courtlandt 
Street Ferry and take the Pennsylvania train to New 


THE R UNA WA Y M A TCH, 1 3 7 

Jersey. I know a minister at Pinebrook, who will 
marry us at once. ’ ’ 

“You don’t mean now, right away, Mortimor?’’ 
Elsie laughed hysterically. 

“Yes, this minute,” cried Mortimor, hailingacab. 

“But when shall we come back, Mortimor. I 
must go home and get my trunk?” 

“Your trunk,” he answered impatiently, “how 
could you get your trunk? Are you mad? If you 
go home we shall never see each other again in 
this wide world. Now get into the cab.” 

Jennie -Andersen drove to the Anspachs after 
luncheon to keep her promise to Elsie, that she 
would see Mrs. Anspach and try to delay the voy- 
age abroad. The love-making had long been 
known to her. While she did not think highly of 
Mortimor, she felt bound to do all she could to aid 
her friend, Elsie. Girls always sympathize with 
lovers they know well. No matter how foolish the 
love may be, they always find a keen enjoyment in 
assisting the unfortunate one, who is already writh- 
ing under self-inflicted pangs, to plunge into deeper 
distress. 

Mrs. Anspach was in the dining-room when Jen- 
nie arrived. She had delayed lunch for Elsie, and 
was surprised when she found that her daughter, had 
left Jennie four hours earlier to come home. 

“She has stopped at Picot’s to try on a dress, but 
she ought to have been here long ago,” she said 
uneasily. 

There was an awkward pause. Jennie did not 


138 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


know how to begin her appeal for delaying the voy- 
age, and Mrs. Anspach felt sure, that the visit had 
something to do with the trouble that was the all 
absorbing subject of her thoughts. There was a step 
in the entry and they both looked up, expecting to 
see Elsie. It was a servant with a letter for Mrs. 
Anspach, that had been left by a District Messen- 
ger. She opened it, uttered an exclamation, and 
then burst into tears, burying her head in her hands 
on the table. 

“Dear Mrs. Anspach, what can I do for you? “ 
cried Jennie. 

‘ ‘ Oh, that villain ! My child has broken my heart. 
Elsie has broken my heart. What shall I do? 
What will John say?” Mrs Anspach sobbed. 

Jennie picked up the open letter, which ran as 
follows: 

“My Dear, Dear Mother: 

“I cannot go abroad, to be separated forever from 
Mortimor. We have gone to be married. 

“Your loving daughter, 

“Elsie.” 

Jennie ran out to the front door, and scanning 
the street anxiously, she saw a District Messenger 
looking at the performance of an organ grinder’s 
monkey at the corner. She sent the footman out to 
bring him in, and he proved to be the boy who had 
brought the message. He told Wilhelmina, who 
had somewhat recovered her self-possession by this 
time, that he had been sent with the letter by a 
young gentleman in a cab near the Battery. 


THE RUNA WA Y MA TCH. 


139 


Wilhelmina telegraphed frantically to John to 
come home instantly, that there was bad news, and 
bidding Jennie hold fast to the messenger till John 
arrived, she put on her bonnet, called a passing cab, 
and rode to the Hardenbergs. Maud was out, and 
her father and mother would return from Newport 
in a week. 

Mrs. Anspach was back again in half-an-hour, 
listening to the. messenger boy’s story once more, 
and Jennie went sorrowfully home. 

Half-an-hour later John Anspach and Bill came 
tearing up from the elevated railway station in a 
carriage. Then there was a rough scene. Father 
and son vowed vengeance against all the pauper 
Hardenbergs. Both scouted the idea that Elsie’s 
wishes, or any law, human or divine, could stand in 
the way of a divorce, as soon as they laid their hands 
on the foolish pair. 

Wilhelmina expected to send a description of the 
fugitives to the police, who would scour city and 
country for them at once. But John, who had sat- 
isfied himself by the examination of the messenger, 
that Mortimorhad five hours’ start, said; “No, Wil- 
helmina, they are married by this time. If we make 
a great news item for the papers by a report to the 
police, it will no doubt be a gratification to all our 
friends, but it will also be a mortification to us. 
The police can do no good. We must wait quietly 
till we hear from the ungrateful Elsie, and if pos- 
sible, keep the public ignorant of what has hap- 
pened. A nice plum it would be for the news- 


140 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

papers to-morrow morning — ‘The elopement of 
John A. Anspach’s daughter. ’ Now, you run down 
to the Hardenbergs again, and if Maud has re- 
turned see what she will say. They are all in the 
plot to cheat that silly little daughter of yours.” 

Then John hired the messenger boy who had 
brought the letter, to stay in the entry on duty for 
a week, and keep what he knew a secret. 

When the excitement in the family had cooled 
a little, the banker went down-town again to a late 
business meeting. The unruffled Bill took his 
usual drive. 

After all the turmoil of Wilhelmina’s grief, and of 
John’s rage, with the conviction firmly established 
in the minds of father and mother that the entire 
Hardenberg family were engaged in the conspiracy 
to steal Elsie — after all the bitter insults that Mrs. 
Anspach had heaped on Maud, and on Mrs. Harden- 
berg, when the latter returned from Newport the 
day after what she called the “sad affair” — presto! 
change — the storm had blown over within one little 
week, and the current of a honeymoon flowed as 
smoothly on the big ship Umbria^ bound for Liver- 
pool, with Mrs. Anspach and the happy couple on 
board, as if Elsie and Mortimor had been married 
in Grace Church with three thousand invitations 
and the parental blessing. 

And what had brought it all about? This, and 
nothing more. John Anspach was very busy. He 
had not breath enough to spare from his business, 
to fret over his daughter’s folly. 


THE RUN A WA V MA TCH. 141 

There was a great rise in stocks about chat time, 
and the Anspachs were up to their eyes in schemes 
and bargains. « 

The day after Mortimor and Elsie were married at 
Pinebrook, they had made their way by a long drive 
to Long Branch and there, like a dutiful son, Morti- 
mor immediately opened communication with his 
mother asking for advice and a remittance. He 
had lost all his money, the morning after his arrival 
at Long Branch, in buying pool tickets at the races. 
Two days later, in accordance with Mrs. Harden- 
berg’s directions to her son by mail, Elsie wrote 
her mother a very affectionate letter. It arrived 
at the Anspachs just before dinner. 

When Wilhelmina had read the letter to John, she 
took it for granted that they would all go down to 
Long Branch that night, breathing fire and slaugh- 
ter against the runaways. But she was mistaken. 

John turned the letter down on the table and 
said, “Wilhelmina, I am too busy to bother with 
this matter just now.” 

“You don’t mean to say you will leave Elsie with 
that fellow a day longer?” Wilhelmina cried, her 
eyes overflowing with tears. 

“Don’t be a fool,” replied John ; “we can’t take 
Elsie away; she is married. Write her a note 
and tell her we hope she is having a pleasant time 
and will come home soon. Her husband will bring 
her fast enough. ” 

“Oh, John,” sobbed Wilhelmina, “everyone will 
point at*us. Elsie not only has made a bad match, 
but she has been married in such a low, vulgar 


142 NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 

way by a country preacher out in New Jersey. If 
the marriage could be kept secret and done over 
again by the Bishop of New York at Grace Church, 
with the usual number of invitations, I could bear 
it better. ” 

“You cannot keep it secret,” John answered. 
“It will, be making a great noise to-morrow in the 
newspapers. I have no doubt Mrs. Hardenberg 
has triumphantly told all her friends, by this time.” 

But VVilhelmina did not write to Elsie that night, 
and the next morning, after they had read an ac- 
count of the elopement in the newspapers, and just as 
Wilhelmina had nerved herself to the task of writing 
the letter, Elsie and Mortimor entered the house. 

Was it forgiveness that John Anspach gave to the 
Hardenbergs for marrying Mortimor to his daugh- 
ter? No indeed. He only took Mortimor on trial, 
as the least troublesome way of getting through 
Elsie’s scrape. If Mortimor proved as unavailable 
as he supposed him to be, money, he thought, would 
buy him off, and time would make this easier to do. 
Meanwhile Wilhelmina could ride rough-shod over 
mother and sister, while he and Bill would see to it, 
that Grosvenor Hardenberg, the father, made noth- 
ing out of the Anspach connection down-town. 

Andersen solemnly asked Mrs. Hardenberg, the 
next time they met, how her new relations, the 
swells, were. This cut her to the quick. Swell 
was comparative, and she thought, to judge ’twixt 
Hardenberg and Anspach, that Hardenberg was 
swell. But Mrs. Hardenberg forgot the 'lapse of 
time. A few months can make a swell. 




CHAPTER XXI. 

THE STOCK EXCHANGE. 

I T was an anxious throng that crowded against the 
rail, outside the Stock Exchange, one Monday 
morning before the opening of dealings. Andersen 
was there, absorbed in himself. The crowd made 
way for him and stood aloof in reverence to the 
great speculator. Something had happened over 
Sunday. A wide spread storm in the West, gave 
opportunity for damage to crops and railroads. 
Expectation was on tiptoe to see whether stocks 
would decline at the opening of the market. When 
the signal to begin dealings was given, the great 
crowd of brokers opened its wide mouth and waved 
its arms, with shriek and roar, that made the gal- 
leries tremble, and blanched the ^ared faces of the 
country lads and lasses, who were gathered there to 
see one of the great sights of New York. 

Next the rail stood a hard-faced man, the coun- 
terpart of hundreds of others in town fora day from 
distant cities. But the man had a familiar face — 
who was he? He was Jennie’s former playmate, 
Harry Erskine, of Virginia, 

Erskine recognized i-n the stately speculator beside 
him, not only his cousin, the melancholy Andersen 
of Virginia, but also the original of the fierce picture 


143 


144 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

of a Confederate General in full uniform, that he 
had just seen in that pantheon of the gods of New 
York — the window of Sarony’s photograph estab- 
lishment on Broadway. 

“Tell me, is that man named Andersen,” Ers- 
kine asked a red-headed broker who ran against 
him. 

“General Andersen, the big operator in stocks,” 
the broker replied as he disappeared. 

“Well, how New York does change a man,” Ers- 
kine thought. “He would pass for Mosby, or any 
other great Southern chief. I wonder whether 
Jennie has changed as much. How I would like 
to see her.” 

Just then his eyes met Andersen’s. The invol- 
untary recognition was mutual, and Erskine claimed 
the cold hand that Andersen unwillingly gave him. 
But there it ended. The instant look of triumphant 
superiority in Andersen’s face, roused Harry’s un- 
controlled temper, and flinging the hand from him 
with a suppressed oath, he passed out. 

“I wish I could expose the way that fellow lived 
in Virginia,” he said between his teeth. “If I had 
the time, I would stay in New York a week to 
do it.” 

Erskine rode up Broadway in a street car and 
stopped at Sarony’s photograph gallery. Pointing 
to Andersen’s picture, he said to the bland person 
behind the counter, “That man Andersen never 
was a Confederate General, and he lived half his 
life with a black woman in Virginia.” 


THE STOCK EXCHANGE. 


145 


“Indeed,” replied the bland person, with a pre- 
occupied air, as he went on bundling up some photo- 
graphs, “that does not make him black.” 

Erskine went sulkily away to his hotel. He had 
to go back that night to Baltimore, — a dry-goods 
drummer must obey orders. But he left New 
York with a curse on his lips for Andersen, and a 
determination to see Jennie the next time he came 
north. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


TUXEDO. 

1 ''HE marriage, and Mrs. Anspach’s voyage 
abroad with the victorious Mortimor and his 
wife, had made a great break in Jennie Andersen’s 
life. 

She felt Elsie’s departure deeply. She had lost 
her only intimate friend. 

Lent had come and there were few gayeties. 
Jennie tried Badminton. The game was hard work 
for a Southern belle. 

She rode, but this threw her too much with Bill 
Anspach, who thought himself a great horseman, 
while Fishbourne never could do himself justice on 
a horse, and Jennie hated to take him with her. 

Then, when she and her father went to Tuxedo 
with the Hardenbergs — the General going to town 
every morning and returning in the afternoon — 
she lost both Fishbourne and Bill, except on Sunday, 
when they always awkwardly came together. 

Jennie, without knowing it, was playing a difficult 
game — the game of marriage. She was too ambi- 
tious to fall in love and marry, as robins mate in 
the Spring, caught by the redness of a breast and a 
preference for this or that particular twitter. But, 
alas! she had no woman to help her in making a 
146 


TUXEDO. 


147 


wise choice. All her worldly wisdom on the sub- 
ject of marriage, had to be evolved from her own 
limited experience and her intuitive perception of 
the fitness of things. Fishbourne — she could have 
loved him in a minute had she let her heart go. 
But every one envied her, while Bill Anspach fol- 
lowed her like a dog. To have such a rich man 
at her feet, made her the belle of all the belles at 
Tuxedo. She could not give Bill up just yet. Ah, 
could she have rolled the two men together into one 
lover, what a husband the compound would have 
made for her — Fishbourne’s tenderness for herself, 
and the qualities of Bill, the brute, for the world. 

At first General Andersen did not get on well 
at Tuxedo. It was an exclusive gathering of many 
of the most important families — most of them people 
who had seen the world, and were bound together 
by a length of acquaintanceship uncommon in 
New York. They asked each other disagreeable 
questions about Andersen, that could not be an- 
swered, and they wondered where he came from in 
the South. In fact, they suspected something 
wrong about him, and it required all Mrs. Harden- 
berg’s tact and push to make it comfortable for him. 

The latest important arrivals, the Hon. Selborne 
Gordon Annesley, a younger son of the British aris- 
tocracy, and his companion, Capt. Bretagne de 
Chauvenet, of the French army, one of the staff of 
Prince Napoleon when he lost his life in Zululand, 
who had been traveling for months in the South, 
both said, that no real Southern gentleman ever car- 


148 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

ried such airs as Andersen assumed. To coun- 
teract the effect of these remarks of Annesleyand. 
de Chauvenet about her friend, Mrs. Hardenberg 
found it necessary to start a report that the Hon. 
little Annesley had not a penny. 

Shortly afterwards, however, the Englishman and 
his companion grew intimate with Andersen through 
the medium of a little poker party, that from an 
upper window often saw the early Sunday sun glisten 
on the bosom of the beautiful lake. They changed 
their opinions of the Southerner then. And well 
they might, for strange to say, Andersen, the luck- 
iest of stock gamblers, had no luck at cards. 
Annesley and de Chauvenet often came to break- 
fast $1000 better off for the night’s play. 

Who has not heard of the Lake of Tuxedo? 
Lovely Tuxedo! with its clear waters nestling be- 
neath the wild rocky precipices and wooded hills, — 
its lofty peaks, and shady drives through the solemn 
forest. 

The Hardenbergs and Andersens rode and drove 
together, and sailed on the lake in tiny boats that 
held but two. Jennie became quite expert in the 
management of a sail, often spending the morning 
alone on the lake. Maud, the timid creature, at 
first shrank from the water, till Andersen learned 
to sail her boat for her, and then it grew to be a 
regular engagement, that he should take her on 
the water in the evening after dinner, while her 
mother gossiped with new friends and old enemies 
on the piazza. 


TUXEDO. 


149 


There was always a silent clash between Fish- 
bourne and Bill Anspach on Sunday. Well-bred 
coolness against sullen contempt. At last it had 
come to this — they were open rivals. 

Although Fishbourne was not much noticed, he 
knew every one at Tuxedo. Bill knew no one, and 
yet he was the observed of all. He would come 
down late on Sunday morning, and stalk about the 
piazza, without noticing a soul save Jennie. When 
evening came, the group of which she was the cen- 
ter, always included both him and Fishbourne. 

One Saturday, in John Anspach ’s private office 
in Wall Street, Bill asked General Andersen to stay 
over the next Monday at Tuxedo, and go fishing on 
the lake with the ladies. 

“Business is dull, and the Governor will look out 
for your interests in the Stock Market,” he said. 

Just then John Anspach came in to eat the lunch 
that had been brought to him. 

“Of course, I will look out for you and myself, 
too, General,” he laughed. “I don’t see what you 
people do to amuse yourselves way out in the 
woods. New York is good enough for me, even 
when my wife is away.” 

But John Anspach knew very well what his son 
was doing at Tuxedo, and he approved of it. 

Anspach and Andersen had been engaged together, 
shortly before that time, in advancing the price of 
stocks. The speculation involved millions of dol- 
lars, and John in transacting the business obtained 
some insight into Andersen’s accumulation of 


150 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

money. The Southerner’s wealth astonished him. 
“Jennie would be a great catch for Bill,” he wrote 
to Wilhelmina at Rome. ‘T know what the sly 
General’s wealth is, and it is expressed by the 
figure one wuth a great many naughts after it.” 

It was a coincidence that Fishbourne had made up 
his mind to stay out of town at the lake on the very 
same Monday chosen by Bill Anspach. The first 
word the lawyer said to Jennie on his arrival on 
Saturday evening, was to make an engagement to 
go sailing with her on Monday in one of the tiny 
boats. 

On Sunday night. Bill informed Jennie, while they 
were walking together, that he would take her 
fishing next day. 

Bill Anspach had learned his manners towards 
women in a low school, and although he was often 
trembling with anxiety and in a cold perspiration, 
to demean himself gallantly before Jennie, he could 
not sue like a gentleman. Ordinarily it was easy 
enough to say “No,” to his overbearing conde- 
scension, but on this occasion, the refusal stuck in 
Jennie’s throat. She was thinking of Fishbourne. 
She was silent and moved away a little. 

Bill looked at her sternly. “You are going 
somewhere with Fishbourne,” he said. 

She nodded, “ Yes,” and they walked back to the 
piazza. 

Jennie Andersen was not a coquette. She real- 
ized then and there, for the first time, that her 
heart led her in one direction and Mammon in 


TUXEDO. 


151 

another. Which would she follow ? She must 
make up her mind quickly. 

Bill was out of doors late that pacing up 

and down in a fever under the trees. It was a 
relief to him to grind his teeth, and shake his fists 
in the darkness at the light in Fishbourrm’s room, 
and a greater relief to know that the lawyer 
was not with Jennie, who had driven out after 
dinner with Annesley and a party of young girls 
to see the lights in New York Harbor from Peak 
Hopatcong. 

Bill would have gone to New York next day had 
not every one known his intention to stay at the 
Lake, and he was ashamed to run away. 

The morning found him dressed to go on the 
water. 

He was sullenly eating his breakfast, when Ander- 
sen came down the long dining-room with the Har- 
denbergs. They stopped for a moment as they 
passed Bill’s table, and Maud, with a toss of her 
head, wished him a good crew for his little boat, 
and luck on the lake. 

Bill tried to laugh, inwardly cursing the luck, 
that he thought was to give Maud to him that day 
for a crew instead of Jennie. 

The three little boats were drawn up at the boat- 
house. Jennie, with red roses in her hat, was fresh 
and beautiful, as she stepped aboard and Fish- 
bourne pushed off. 

Bill sat in his craft looking bored to death, and 
steadied the boat with his hand expecting Maud, 


152 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

when lo! she passed by on Andersen’s arm, and as 
the General leered at her, embarked with him. 

Maud to sail with Andersen — Mrs. Hardenberg 
with Bill. Yes, it had all been arranged between 
mother and daughter, and there the matron stood 
ready to go with Bill, as if nothing unexpected had 
happened to him. 

“Hop in, hop in,” he cried in a passion, and she 
clambered in unassisted, almost upsetting the craft 
in her efforts. 

Oh ! for a glimpse of the breast of each man 
and each woman as it really is. Could we see 
the spirit that broods over every heart in its passage 
through life, what a procession of angels and ghouls 
there would be. As the boats sailed away, the 
first, bore a young man whose breast was filled 
with honest love ; an angel led it on. 

The second, faugh ! behind it lagged a red- 
mouthed hag, an unclean fury, and cracked her 
cheeks in impotent endeavor to blow the sail for 
Andersen. 

While perched on Bill Anspach’s mast, above 
Mrs. Hardenberg’s head, sat the Father of Lies 
himself. . 

Bill Anspach did not throw out a line till Mrs. 
Hardenberg asked him for one, to break the silence; 
then she talked away; of his mother’s voyage abroad 
with Elsie ; of his sister Elsie’s sweetness. — “She 
had a pocket full of letters from her, the last from 
Rome and then with a scream, “there’s a fish ! ” 
she hauled the line in unassisted by Bill. 


TUXEDO. 


153 


Bill silently took the victim off the hook, and 
then threw out a troll for himself. He barely 
answered Mrs. Hardenberg’s questions, and that 
was all. It was not a pleasant fishing party. 

In half an hour they were at the end of the lake, 
and turned round to beat back with the wind dead 
ahead. 

The tacks were so short that the lines had to be 
taken in, and every time they went about, it was close 
to the shore in shallow water, under tall bushes 
that overhung the boat. 

Bill grew a little talkative, watching the shore 
ahead carefully as they approached a bank, from 
which long branches hung down over the lake. 

Mrs. Hardenberg was sitting bolt upright to 
windward. Bill did not put his helm down quickly. 
The boat ran in under the branches, and in the 
twinkling of an eye the sail was caught and swept 
across the deck, forcing Mrs. Hardenberg over- 
board into the shallow water. There she stood up 
to her waist in the cold lake, her bonnet and dress 
torn by the branches. Bill, uttering all kinds of 
exclamations and apologies, slipped overboard, and 
leading her to the boat lifted her in. 

Mrs. Hardenberg was not hurt. Her composure 
was wonderful, and when they landed in their wet 
clothes, and Bill bribed the boat-keeper to silence, 
she even smiled. Luckily they reached the club- 
house without meeting any one, and the incident 
was kept a profound secret. 

Bill went to his room and threw off his wet 


154 mot of her FATHER’S RACE. 

clothes in great glee. “Well done,” he roared. 

“ I did not think I could manage an accident so 
neatly, and she did not suspect me.” 

But Bill was mistaken. Mrs. Hardenberg knew 
he had thrown her overboard. It was no harder 
to bear than a hundred snubs she had borne from 
women, most of which were more than repaid in 
time. Why should she not be able to square her 
account with a man in the end ? Even with the 
ducking, had she not the advantage of the Ans- 
pachs still ? Was not her son married to Elsie 
Anspach ? Would she not be willing to be thrown 
overboard a hundred times to marry Maud to 
Andersen ? Her husband — pshaw ! neither he nor 
Maud would ever hear of the accident. She told 
Maud she had wet her dress and feet while getting 
out of the boat. 

Far up the lake, beating to and fro under the- 
shadow of the dark mountain, Fishbourne trimmed 
his little sail. 

The fishing was poor, and when Jennie spoke of 
New York, it led them back to the winter. Mrs. 
Kimberly’s ball, the last one of the season, was in 
their minds, because Fishbourne had not been 
there. When Jennie recalled his absence, her 
remembrance of it brought the hot blood to his 
face. He was away in the West on business for a 
client, that night, he said. Then he told her of his 
hard work to get on, what a struggle it was in 
New York ; how few friends he had when he came 


TUXEDO, 155 

from Philadelphia ; and how he was gradually win- 
ning friends and influence. 

He spoke of his mother ; of his family name 
that he hoped to be worthy of some day. He was 
proud of his blood, proud of his ancestors, and 
would die, rather than advance his interests by a 
deed unworthy of a Fishbourne. His face betrayed 
his emotion as he told over without reserve the 
secret hopes and aims of his ambition. The last 
secret only remained to be spoken, — the avowal of 
his love. 

But mark ! the sudden change in Jennie’s face as 
Fishbourne spoke of his name and pride of birth — 
what woeful revelation had come to her ? She was 
pale, and rose from her seat with a cold, despairing 
gesture. 

“Mr. Fishbourne, you are forgetting yourself. 
You are telling me too much about yourself,” she 
said. 

The transformation from a lovely, blushing 
woman, encouraging an avowal of love, to an un- 
sympathetic, rude passenger in the same boat, was 
so sudden and complete, that Fishbourne could 
scarcely believe his senses. When he recovered 
from his embarrassment, he looked at Jennie in 
astonishment. There was an awkward silence for 
a moment. Then he said, coldly, “ As you please,” 
and busied himself with the sail. 

“ Miss Gillingham would say it was not right for 
me to let him go on, when I could not tell him all 
about my life, as he told me about his,” the poor 


156 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

girl thought, as she looked up at the blue sky and 
bit her pale lip till the blood came. 

It was an awful moment, when Fishbourne’s story 
of his life, and his pride of family, came from his 
lips together, and Jennie stooping to lift a true 
woman’s cup of happiness, — an avowal of love, sud- 
denly realized, that to be truthful, as her love re- 
quired, she must tell Fishbourne who she was, and 
that to tell him who she was, would drive him from 
her forever. But the little teacher was summoned 
back to the poor girl’s heart only to justify its own 
honesty. God gave her a truthful heart ; Miss 
Gillingham had only polished the diamond. 


CHAPTER XXIIl. 

DEAD man’s spring. 

T he weather was growing warmer. The season 
was getting late. The daily trips from Tuxedo 
to the City had grown tiresome to General Ander- 
sen, and in a few days more they were all to go to 
Newport. At Mrs. Hardenberg’s request, Ander- 
sen had remained at the Lake all day to take a long 
drive. 

There was a crowd on the piazza in the morning 
when the General’s showy barouche with great 
rattling chains, drove up. 

“ We shall miss General Andersen when he goes 
away,” said Annesley to de Chauvenet, touching 
his friend slyly on the pocket. 

“ A great loss Mrs. Hardenberg’s departure will 
be to us,” de Chauvenet remarked, turning to a 
handsome matron who was talking with an elderly 
divine dressed in the strictest garb of his order. 

“ She, a loss,” laughed the matron ; “ a danger- 
ous, scheming woman — she’s trying to marry her 
daughter to that old beast.” 

“ Unicuique in sua vita credendum,” answered 
the divine solemnly. 

“ Now, Doctor,” cried the lady, raising her 

157 


15 ^ NOT of ' HER FATHER'S RACE. 

finger, “ you must translate that sentence for me. 
It is not in good form to quote Latin in modern 
society.” 

“ A very free translation, madam, is that New 
York is a great place for match makers,” the divine 
replied. 

The barouche went spinning away and Andersen 
and Mrs. Hardenberg were forgotten. Jennie and 
Maud sat together on the front seat. Maud brim- 
ful of vivacity, and Jennie sadly out of heart. She 
had not seen Fishbourne since the day of the sail. 
In vain she asked herself why she should want to 
see the man she had rebuffed. Did a woman 
ever reason herself out of love ? Never, though 
good women often reason themselves into mar- 
riage, which they say is love. 

Jennie was tired of Maud’s blandishments, and 
of Mrs. Hardenberg’s flattery. She hated to think 
of what might happen between Maud and her 
father. 

It was up hill and down dale, a ten mile drive, tire- 
some and hot, till they stopped at Dead Man’s 
Spring, on the brow of a wild mountain declivity 
that commanded a noble view of the placid Hudson. 

Here the lunch was spread. Andersen could 
not eat. In a few minutes he had a chill, one 
of his old attacks, brought on by exposure to sun 
and air. They laid him out on the cushions, 
covered up with shawls and horse blankets. After 
the chill had passed, he went to sleep in the car- 
riage tucked away in wraps, with Jennie beside him. 


DEAD MAN'S SPRING. i59 

Mrs. Hardenberg was all sympathy and attention, 
and Maud shed tears of distress. 

When Andersen woke up they had driven half-way 
down the mountain. He was thirsty. Maud got 
out a bottle of champagne from the lunch basket, 
and gave him a tumblerful. In a little while he 
took another, threw off the wraps and began to talk 
to himself. He would have taken more champagne, 
had not Jennie dropped the bottle out of the 
carriage. 

But it was too late. Andersen leered at Maud, 
caught her hand, and said she was the loveliest girl 
he had ever known. They quieted him for a time, 
but in a little while he broke out afresh, and to 
Jennie’s horror he addressed Maud as his “ Lucy” 
over and over again. It was the first time that 
Jennie remembered to have heard her mother’s 
name from his lips. 

“ It was only an accident, my dear,” Mrs. Harden- 
berg whispered softly to Jennie, as they got out of 
-the carriage, “ your father was ill and weak.” 

It was true. Anderson never had been a drunk- 
ard. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


NEWPORT. 

N ARRAGANSETT pier looks across the blue 
waters at Newport in summer, and laughs a 
wild derisive laugh of scorn. Newport gazes coldly 
back, as the steamers go and come, and smiles a 
superior smile of contempt, as much as to say “You 
are no rival of mine, I despise you.” 

It was to Narragansett, with its hotel life, and its 
showy throng of men and women, dancing, flirt- 
ing and scheming, that Mr. and Mrs. Hardenberg 
took Maud. General Andersen soon followed with 
Jennie. 

John Ansp^ch and his wife had entered the list 
of the exclusive. They were above the democratic 
give and take of Narragansett. A villa at New* 
port — the awe inspiring luxury of Bellevue Avenue, 
was what he and Wilhelmina craved as in the path 
of their advancement. To Newport they repaired, 
on the first Saturday after Wilhelmina’s return from 
abroad with Elsie and Mortimor, which was much 
earlier than had been intended. The energetic 
mother-in-law cut short her foreign travel, for the 
express purpose of showing John what a tractable, 
agreeable soi)-in-law she had. 

Mortimor Hardenberg had pushed himself far 
i6o 


NEWPORT. 


i6i 


in his mother-in-law’s favor while they traveled. 
He would not have been his mother’s son had he 
not done so. 

Mortimor was a prince of travelers. Routes, 
tickets, seats, porters, rooms, servants, even Time 
itself, arranged themselves without a false move at 
his bidding, like a well disciplined army. Wilhel- 
mina grew dependent on him, as with never failing 
good temper, he bore her cool treatment and minis- 
tered to all her wants. She soon learned to like 
him. Then she made up her mind that she would 
absorb him — cut him off from the body of his 
pauper family. Her letters prepared John for the 
change. “ JMortimor is an agreeable fellow and our 
daughter’s husband,” she wrote. She was sure 
John would like him. They must get him a posi- 
tion in business down town and try him. 

Bill’s sneers at Mortimor and the marriage, after 
Wilhelmina’s return, were ineffectual, and father 
and mother on the way to Newport, decided to buy. 
a house for Elsie in Fiftieth Street. Mortimer 
had already been given a place in the Bank by his 
father-in-law, to date from the following winter. 

Oh, the triumph in Mrs. Hardenberg’s face, when 
Mortimor, driving along Ocean Avenue, stopped to 
tell her all this. Had she been drowned by Bill 
Anspach in Tuxedo Lake, Mortimor’s success would 
have more than squared the account between her 
and the Anspachs, she thought. Mrs. Anspach 
might snub her as much as she pleased — till Ander- 
sen married Maud, then she would take her re- 


1 62 not of her FATHER'S RACE. 

venge. To fight back before that time would make 
confusion and disturb her plans. 

Jennie was alone all the week with the Harden- 
bergs at the Narragansett House, till Saturday 
brought General Andersen from New York. She 
had tried hard to persuade her father to take a 
villa at Newport, but he would not listen to her. 

Andersen enjoyed the excitement of the hotel life 
at the sea-shore, just as he did in New York. It 
gratified him to have the loungers watch him get 
in and out of his showy equipage ; and then too, 
at Narragansett, he had Maud and Mrs. Harden - 
berg with him. 

The round of life at Narragansett was tiresome to 
Jennie, a repetition of the winter’s dissipation in 
town. Nearly every afternoon she took the car- 
riage over to Newport in the boat, and often spent 
the night at the Anspachs’ villa. 

There were many formal dmners, and balls at 
the Newport Brunswick. Mrs. Hardenberg and 
Maud were there in full feather, leaders in the 
throng of beautiful women, millionaires, soldiers, 
and naval officers. 

Military men flocked to Newport — generals 
and admirals, and fledglings from the navy 
ships that ran into the harbor for a week or 
two. Then there was the world renowned Naval 
War College, an institution established at Newport 
by the Government, with a full corps of resident 
professors — all of them handsome young fellows, 
who delivered lectures once a month to lovely 


NEWPORT. 


163 


young ladies, and to stern yachtsmen, on the art of 
naval warfare, and exploded torpedoes in the bay 
at periodic intervals, to the great delight of their 
fair friends. 

What a load of private insult poor Mrs. Harden- 
berg had to bear from Wilhelmina, to appear on 
good terms with her in public. She even had to 
affect that she did not see that her son Mortimor 
avoided her, in obedience to his mother-in-law’s 
snappish, black eyes. 

Thus the summer ran its course. John Anspach 
entertained every new arrival of note, and Jennie 
shone at his house as the lovely Southerner, whose 
beauty and wealth had brought even the cold- 
blooded Bill to her feet. 

The Anspachs’ cottage at Newport — it was the 
Anspachs’ palace at Newport. 

The man or the woman who will spend and 
spend, can have a palace at Newport and be very 
comfortable as long as the money lasts, to the tune 
of a thousand or two a week. John Anspach 
spent twice that sum and did not miss it. But what 
are the sufferings of the people who do miss it, and 
live on the ragged edge of anxiety, concerning the 
rise and fall of risky ventures to provide them with 
means for their* wild extravagance ! 

Johft Anspach ’s cottage was a palace, with a small 
army of servants, a ball room, huge stables, con- 
servatories, and tennis courts. Wilhelmina received 
reports from a housekeeper and under-housekeeper, 
as she watched the fleet of ships sailing by, and 


1 64 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


thought that her great house looked down on the 
other great houses, as the big steamer swept by and 
over-shadowed the little schooners. 

Balls, tennis parties, dancing at Narragansett, 
yachting and the admiration of a great many men, 
kept our belle absorbed in the fickle pleasures of 
the moment. In the midst of her gayety and dis- 
sipation, the remembrance of the sail with Fish- 
bourne on Tuxedo Lake would often return to her, 
and visions of him were always ready to rise, in 
every interval of sober thought that her life allowed 
her. Once a week Mr. Fishbourne was at Newport 
for a day. A look would have called him to 
Jennie’s feet again. 

“ That Fishbourne is too high-toned ; he is a 
crank,” said Bergman to another young man on the 
Newport boat. “ He thinks he belongs to the 
royal family. The other day in New York I got 
a good case on shares, for damages against the 
Elevated Road for building their track so close to 
a house, as to shut out the light and air. My 
client told me that Fishbourne had refused the 
case, unless he received an absolutely unconditional 
fee, and that he called the taking of a case on 
shares champerty.” 

“ What does champerty mean, you have been 
longer at the bar than I have, Bob .? ” Bob had 
never heard the word. 

“ My sister says Fishbourne stands in Bill Ans- 
pach’s way with Miss Ai/dersen,” Bergman con- 
tinued, “ but I don’t believe such a high-toned 


NEWPORT. 165 

fool will ever succeed either in love or in 
law.” 

“Yes, but he is an aristocrat and has an an- 
cestry, and so has Miss Andersen. This is a bond 
of sympathy pretty hard to overcome,” replied 
Bob. 

“ Bah ! ” sneered Bergman, “ it will not weigh a 
feather against Bill Anspach’s money.” 

Jennie of late often had loving thoughts of Miss 
Gillingham. She had written the teacher an affec- 
tionate letter asking her to pay them a visit during 
the winter. She did this without General Ander- 
sen’s knowledge. 

The teacher’s reply, declining the invitation, was 
a long one. Her father was dead. She had re- 
mained in Pennsylvania a month to settle up her 
affairs and take possession of her small inheritance. 
When she returned to Virginia, poor Mrs. Erskine 
died. The Manor was deserted then. Not a soul 
lived there, except the decrepit black people who 
still occupied the old negro quarters, keeping them- 
selves from starvation by cutting poplar sticks and 
gathering sumach. Miss Gillingham had built her- 
self a small house on the hill above Andersen’s cot- 
tage, where she lived with a black servant. It was 
far from the schoolhouse, but she liked the long 
walk in the fresh morning air, and the return in 
the sober evening. 

Then she told Jennie about every one in the 
neighborhood. John Erskine still kept a store. 
Harry Erskine, his son, had never returned to see 


i66 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


his father and mother. She had heard that he was 
a bad fellow. Mr. Hood was in Congress. 

The Negro School was prospering ; she had a 
hundred scholars and five assistants. Now, that 
her father and mother were gone, her school was 
all she had to live for. 

Would they ever meet again in this world ? She 
knew that Jennie could not come to Virginia, and 
she feared that a visit from her to the Ander- 
sens in the North would make unhappiness. “ It 
would irritate your father, Jennie,” she wrote, “ to 
remind him by my presence of the by-gone days. 
Yet I would that I had you with me even for only 
half an hour. There is no one I can confide in 
here ; 1 am alone.” 


CHAPTER XXV. 


THE FOX HUNT. 

I T was September. The Anspachs' villa was full 
of company. The Hardenbergs and Andersens 
were there from Narragansett. Bill Anspach came 
up from New York for a week and arranged to 
give them a run with the Newport Hounds. It 
gave Bill particular pleasure to tell Jennie this, as 
Fishbourne was coming out of church one Sunday 
morning with her, because he knew the lawyer 
could not ride. “ Of course you will be there, 
Fishbourne,” he said. . 

Tory Four Corners, three miles out of Newport, 
was the scene of many a run of the Fox Hunting 
Club. 

The gentlemen all knew the country well. The 
wise 'Ones were usually present early enough in the 
.morning to see the scent laid, and thus, learning 
the exact course to be run, they were able to cut 
off a great many corners and fences, when the hunt 
took place. 

, The plan of the chase was as follows: Early on 
the appointed day, a careful huntsman on foot, 
dragged a bag of anise seed, for two or three 
miles over the fields and through the fences, till he 
came to a point where a bag fox was to be let 
167 


1 68 NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 

loose in the afternoon, the worrying of which 
always terminated the day’s sport. 

On this occasion the meet was at 3 p . m . 

Promptly at the hour, there was assembled a mot- 
ley collection of all kinds of vehicles, from the 
elegant barouche, filled with beautiful women, to 
the hired buggy, together with a great crowd of 
men and boys drawn from the country for miles 
around. Then there were the members of the 
club — among them Bill Anspach and Mortimor 
Hardenberg — twenty-five or thirty gentlemen, all 
attired in full hunting suits, their brilliant coats 
and bright spurs shining in the afternoon sun like 
so many butterflies’ wings. 

But all the ladies were not in carriages. The 
American girl, when she goes to Newport, if she is 
of a venturesome turn of mind, is very apt to take 
to chasing the scent bag on horseback, and on that 
day there were a dozen pretty creatures, mounted 
on fine horses, all anxious to follow the gentlemen 
in pink. Jennie Andersen was there in a blue 
habit, riding Bill Anspach’s favorite bay. Fish- 
bourne, attired in plain clothes, watched her grace- 
ful seat as he sat moodily on his horse, and vowed 
that he would devote the rest of his life tb making a 
good horseman of himself. 

There was a great flutter of pretty women in 
carriages, huntsmen, young ladies on horseback, 
country people continually trying to get run over, 
and small boys, mounted on ponies, who were 
dreadfully in the way of the gayly dressed huntsmen. 


THE FOX Hunt. 


169 

Bill Anspach kept his horse dancing about, and 
made vicious cuts with his whip at every unlucky, 
barefooted urchin who came near him. 

“ There they are ! there they are ! ” yelled the 
crowd, as the chief huntsman appeared followed 
by the hounds, that drowned the small talk in the 
carriages with their baying. There were twelve 
couples, ' most of them English beagles, with a 
sprinkling of native dogs to make up the pack. 

The Master of the hunt mounted his horse, and 
rode on followed by the baying dogs and the hunts- 
men, the young ladies on horseback, the carriages 
and the men and boys — a motley throng, all push- 
ing on each other’s heels with nervous haste. 

Then ensued a scene of crazy confusion. Only 
the wise, and the initiated members of the club knew, 
that for the greater part of the chase, they did not 
pursue a fox. Everybody, wild with excitement, 
was possessed with the idea that a fox must be 
chased then and there. But where the creature was 
to come from, no one could divine. An elderly 
lady in an open carriage rose up and demanded 
loudly, “ Where is the fox ? Where is the fox ? ” 
seizing in her excitement the end of the driver’s 
whip. 

Fishbourne thought of Mother Goose and the 
cow jumping over the Moon, and had a ludicrous 
vision of the elderly lady, whip in hand, mounted 
on the cow and soaring through space in chase of 
the scent bag. 

Bill Anspach had been practicing in the riding- 


t^O MOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 

school a month for the occasion. His erratic move- 
ments on horseback threatened the lives of those 
afoot. Now he galloped in one direction, then in 
another, and ever and anon he reined his fiery steed 
on its haunches, and gazed about among the ladies, 
as if in search of the fox. 

. At the point from whence the scent bag had been 
started, the cavalcade stopped. The people filled 
every gap, and the drivers of the carriages, anxious 
to see a fox, drove pell mell over them, as if they 
were a flock of sheep. There was a Babel of shouts, 
howls of dogs, screams and laughter. Then the 
.huntsman winded his horn and commanded silence. 

Bill Anspach waited for the first time quietly 
drawn up by the roadside, a little in advance of 
the multitude, his object being to get a good start 
when the dogs took the scent. The huntsman 
winded his horn again several times, and calling the 
pack around him, the scent was taken by a small 
red and white dog, that led off with sharp yelps, 
the whole pack following and joining in the clamor. 

In a minute the great crowd was strung along the 
trail. First came the gentlemen in hunting suits, 
then the young ladies on horseback, and the more 
sober-minded riders in plain clothes, and lastly, the 
multitude of men and boys, while the long line of 
vehicles tore madly down the road, that ran parallel 
with the course of the chase. The anise seed bag 
hunt was begun. 

The going was easy enough for a good rider over 
the flat country, but poor Fishbourne found it 


THE FOX HUNT 17 1 

difficult to keep his seat, and wished himself any- 
where else than at a fox chase. 

The hounds had followed the trail over a low 
fence into a corn-field. The Master of the hunt 
jumped the fence, followed by a number of gentle- 
men and young ladies. But Bill Anspach and some 
of his friends, knowing where the trail came out of 
the corn, gallantly led the way by the road to the 
point at which the hounds would emerge. 

“ Here they come ! ” “ Here they come ! ” and 

as the dogs struggled through the fence. Bill 
braced himself in the saddle and on the appear- 
ance of the first three or four of the pack, he dashed 
among them down the road, at the imminent risk 
of trampling them to death. The rest of the field 
were following, when the owner of the land made 
his appearance on the scene, and launched a volley 
of abuse after the flying riders, as he pointed back 
to the wide swath through the corn. 

A quarter of a mile down the road the trail 
turned into a meadow, with a brook about four 
yards wide running through the middle of it. 
The dogs over-ran the scent in the road, at the 
turn, and ran baying on for some distance before 
they stopped. 

But the gentlemen knew the course of the anise 
bag too well to follow the dogs. Turning sharply, 
the leaders jumped the fence into the field, the two 
upper bars having been conveniently let down by 
a boy. 

Jennie Andersen went over with a laugh, fol- 


172 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

lowed by most of the young ladies. Just then the 
hounds came up and struck the scent again. Every- 
body was crazy to be going. The last bar was let 
down and the carriages drove through. 

While the dogs crossed the brook and ran crying 
on, the leading riders charged boldly at the water. 
Jennie and Mortimor Hardenberg went bravely 
over, but the horse of one gallant gentleman refused 
to leap and pitched his rider with arms extended 
into the water. It was funny to see him making 
his way, wet and bedraggled, to the bank, where 
he caught his horse and rode sadly on. 

The crowd waded the creek and the carriages 
followed. At the other side of the field, the good 
riders jumped a four-barred fence, which was sub- 
sequently let down for the timid ones, and another 
road was found, down which the houn-ds were rac- 
ing the scent. 

From the brook to the place where the fox Was 
to be let loose, there was the same succession of 
fields and roads with some stiff jumps. Jennie and 
Mortimor Hardenberg with many others, essayed 
them all. Alas ! three gentlemen and one lady 
were tumbled off. The boys, who followed in great 
glee, let down the bars for the riders who hung 
behind. 

Bill Anspach, always in the advance when an ob- 
stacle was not in sight, fell back to the rear as he 
approached the fences, and had a special boy bribed, 
to stick close by him and slyly take down the rails. 

At length, after half an hour’s run, the hunt 


THE FOX HUNT. 173 

reached the spot where the anise bag chase came to 
an end, and the live fox was to be let loose. 

The riders gathered their sweating horses to- 
gether, all looking immensely preoccupied, and 
well they might feel preoccupied, for every one 
was sore, muddy and warm. 

“ Gentlemen,” cried the Master of the hunt, we 
suspect that a wild fox is in yonder copse. If he 
breaks away, please let him have a start ; do not 
chase him ahead of the huntsman and the dogs. 
When you see the fox, cry ‘ Tally ho.’ Again, I say, 
keep behind the huntsman and the dogs.” 

As the Master of the hunt finished his speech, 
the carriages, that had followed by the road, drove 
madly up, with their fair occupants in a frenzy 
of excitement. Then, the huntsman who had 
been keeping the dogs close together, threw them 
into the underbrush, and in a few seconds the voice 
of the short-eared hound, that had taken the scent 
first, at the beginning of the day’s sport, broke forth. 
The fox was away, followed by the baying pack. 

What was the history of the fox that was being 
chased ? He was a bag fox, and not a native of 
Rhode Island. He had been purchased by the 
club, with two others, in North Carolina, at a cost 
of fifty dollars each. He was caught when a cub, 
by three small boys while snaring rabbits. They 
had sold him for fifty cents to a tavern keeper, who 
brought him up tame, and kept him chained at his 
back door three years. He was tame indeed, but 
yet, poor fellow, he would run when the dogs were 


174 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

threatening his life. But whither could he run ? He 
was in a strange land. 

The Bible says, that foxes have holes. True, 
but these holes are at home. Mr. Fox at home, 
knows the country like a book for miles and miles 
around. He is familiar with every barn and hen 
roost, every thicket, swamp and nook, and when he 
is chased, it is almost a pastime for him to make 
use of his knowledge to baffle his pursuers. Tame 
him and fatten him, put him in a bag and carry him 
starving five hundred miles to a strange place, as 
the Newport Club had done with their poor crea- 
ture, and when you loose him, he is as stupid as a 
pole cat. A bag fox is no more like a wild fox, 
than a fat Chatham Street shop-keeper is like a 
Sioux Chief. 

But to return to the chase. The scene of the 
hunt was an open country of old fields surrounded 
by ricketty fences, and interspersed with tracts of 
woodland and underbrush. 

The fox had been turned loose ten minutes be- 
fore the arrival of the huntsman, and hidden away 
in the thicket, w^as vainly trying to take a nap, while 
wondering what had become of his accustomed 
chain and bone. 

When the dogs started him he ran out directly in 
front of the crowd, taking a bee dine across the 
field and through the fence. 

Then there was tremendous excitement. Bill 
Anspach started his hunter at a sharp canter, shout- 
ing “ Tally ho ” vigorously. The horse mistaking 


THE FOX HUNT. 


175 


the “ Ho ” for a command to halt, stopped short 
behind the hounds in full cry, pitching Bill over 
his head on the soft grass, to the great horror of 
the occupants of the carriages. Luckily the finan- 
cier rose with no greater injury than a good 
shaking. 

The fox was over the fence, and the hounds close 
behind him, when it became evident to the ladies 
and gentlemen who were riding for dear life, that 
there were no movable bars in the fence before 
them. They must all leap it, or tear it down. 

The fox was not so accommodating as the Bag 
had been in the course it took ; it always crossed a 
fence at a point where bars could be removed. 

This particular fence was a disagreeable-looking 
obstacle four feet high, covered with thick bushes, 
and along it, on both sides ran a mound of very 
hard looking stones, cleared from the field. 

Mortimor Hardenberg was the first to gallop up 
to this terrible barrier. A cold chill ran along his 
spine as he regarded it. He looked back and saw 
the carriages and the crowd ; the gaze of the 
world was on him, he must go over the fence, and 
shutting his eyes he found himself on the other side 
without accident. 

Jennie went lightly over, and was gone after the 
hounds like a flash. Several gentlemen came on in 
succession. The first cleared the top rail, but his 
horse stumbled on the stones as he alighted, and 
rolled his rider off. The second got over best of 
all. The third was Fishbourne. 


176 NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 

Fishboiirne bad followed the hunt all the after- 
noon, getting through the fences as best he could, 
mortified to death at the distance between him and 
Jennie Andersen. When he rode up at the termin- 
ation of the bag chase, he saw Maud and her 
mother in their carriage laughing at his awkward 
seat. It stung him to the quick. Just then the fox 
started. 

Lashing his horse, the lawyer rode wildly after 
Jennie, and charged desperately at the fence. 
Pale and with compressed lips, he met his fate. 
The horse, as unaccustomed to leaping as his rider, 
struck the top rail with his belly and falling back 
on the stones rolled over Fishbourne. 

There was great dismay. Those who saw the 
accident forgot the chase for an instant. Several 
riders dismounted, the carriage doors were all hastily 
opened, and Fishbourne, torn and bleeding, but not 
seriously hurt, was carried against his will to the 
Hardenbergs’ carriage. 

While this was being done, someone slipped five 
dollars in silver into the hands of the lookers on. 
In a minute two panels of the fence had disap- 
peared, and the hunt and throng of vehicles 
pressed on through the opening into the next field. 

The fox was followed straight across the meadow 
into a pasture through an old gateway, and the 
hounds lost him in a tall worm fence, on the other 
side of which was a thick piece of underbrush of 
ten or twelve acres. Of course, he was in the under- 
brush. The dogs were scouring it vigorously. 


THE FOX HUNT. 

No one thought of jumping the fence, it was six 
feet high. 

As there was no obstacle to be leaped, Bill An- 
sp-ach was in the lead and ready for any emergency. 
Dismounting, he seized rail after rail and tore it 
from the fence ; in his haste, nearly poking out the 
eye of the Master of the hunt with one of the sticks. 

In a few minutes a gap was made, wide enough 
for the excited horsemen to scramble through. A 
moment later the pack opened cry, pushing the 
fox straight on into the cover, and Bill Anspach 
rode boldly into the underbrush, followed by most 
of the riders. 

The carriages made a long detour by the road to 
reach the other side of the wood, consuming about 
a quarter of an hour. As they approached the 
spot on the edge of the wood, from which it was 
supposed the riders had long since emerged, a 
chorus of despairing yells from the hounds was 
heard, mingled with short barks and growls. The 
fox had evidently done something provoking. 

Then, an unexpected scene presented itself. 
Thomas Mullaney worked on a farm near by. He 
had & feme cottage of one and a half stories, 
a potato patch, and pig pen, nine children and 
Bridget, the red-headed wife of his bosom. His cot- 
tage stood in the field near the edge of the wood. 

The fox, closely pushed by the hounds, had left 
the bushes, and attracted by the resemblance of 
Mr. Mullaney’s cottage to his North Carolina home, 
took advantage, unseen by mortal eye, of the open 


178 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE.. 

front door, and was snugly hidden away under the 
family bed in the back room. While Bridget and 
her two half-grown boys, who were digging pota- 
toes in the garden when the hounds rushed over 
the fence, stood guard, with a pitchfork, two old 
shovels and a bull terrier, keeping the howling 
pack at bay. 

Did she not remember how, in the old country, 
the gentlemen had overturned her father’s pig pen 
and chased a fox across the thatch ? “ This is a 

free land,” she cried, “ and no make-believe rack 
renter shall hunt a fox over my premises, nor any- 
where else in the State of Rhode Island, if I can 
hinder it.” 

But where were the huntsmen ? Painfully and 
slowly they had pushed their way through the thick 
briars till they emerged on the scene. 

There was pretty Miss Bergman, her lovely skin 
torn to pieces in a shocking manner by the bram- 
bles, her veil in tatters and skirt rent in twain. 
Then came Bill Anspach, with his pink coat in 
shreds, and his breeches open at the knees. Jennie 
had lost her hat, her dress was torn, and she had a 
long bleeding cut on her cheek ; and down to the 
last of the gallant party who had ridden down into 
the bushes, not one presented a respectable appear- 
ance. 

The ladies galloped away to the shelter of the 
carriages, while the gentlemen clustered together 
and pinned up their rents as best they could. 

The fox was in the cottage. That was plain 


THE FOX HUNT, 


179 


enough. It was also plain that Bridget’s hostility 
must be overcome to catch him. The Master of 
the hunt took it for granted, that every one would 
assist him in capturing Reynard unharmed. It was 
evident that the poor creature was usually caught 
alive, and served several runs, before he met with 
an accident. 

Bill Anspach was full of authority, and a whis- 
pered consultation took place between him and the 
Master of the hunt. Then the huntsman winded 
his horn merrily, and rated the hounds soundly to 
call them round him, while Bill hopped over the 
fence, exposing his tattered pantaloons as he did 
so. 

Walking across the soft potato patch, whip in 
hand, with great difficulty but still with dignity, 
Bill entered into negotiation with Mrs. Mullaney, 
uneasily watching the bull terrier out of the corner 
of his eye all the time. 

Nobody could hear a word of the conversation, 
so great was the distance, but that it was hot and 
bitter, was evident from Bridget’s animated manner. 

Bill drew out his pocket-book, and Bridget 
niotioned it contemptuously away with the pitch- 
fork. 

The crowd drew closer and closer and lined the 
fence, eager to satisfy its curiosity. Expectation 
was at its height. Mrs. Mullaney gesticulated with 
her weapon, and Bill, still watching the dog, waved 
his whip majestically to and fro, when suddenly the 
Irish lady dropped the pitchfork and seized an old 


l 8 o not of her fa therms race. 


broom that was lying in the patch. The bull 
terrier began to bark and show his teeth. There 
was evidently a crisis. 

Bill Anspach backed away, keeping the dog off 
with his whip, but Bridget followed him closely, 
pushing the broom in his face. And so they went 
slowly across the potato patch and down the garden 
walk, Bridget with the broom, and the dog with his 
white teeth, driving the huntsman step by step 
before them, till by a sudden movement he escaped 
over the fence unharmed. 

This ended the hunt. For the gentleman all 
voted, grouped in solemn consultation, that it would 
be foolish to risk another encounter with Mrs. 
Mullaney. The fox might stay where he was. 

Mortimor Hardenberg rode close to the fence as 
they were going away, and taking off his hat with 
a bow, offered Mrs. Mullaney twenty-five dollars 
for the old broom, to take home as a trophy of the 
day’s chase, in place of the fox’s tail. Her answer 
was a shout of defiance. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


SHE TELLS HIM. 

B efore Jennie reached Newport that evening 
Mrs. Hardenberg had carried Fishbourne to 
Narragansett with her. 

In vain the lawyer protested the next day that 
he must go back to New York at once ; Mrs. Har- 
denburg, in Jennie’s presence, insisted that he 
should remain till his bruises were healed. 

“You ought not to go back for at least two or 
three days,” Jennie added, boldly for her, with a 
faintness at her heart. Then she left him suddenly, 
and went to her room. She threw herself on the 
bed, and buried her face in the pillow. “ What have 
I done ! What have I done ! ” she said., 

Fishbourne, with his sprained wrist in a sling, 
found Jennie late in the afternoon. 

They were all watching a game of tennis on the 
lawn. Jennie and Fishbourne sat down on the 
grassy bank with Mrs. Hardenberg, who was soon 
called away. She was glad to leave them together ; 
she hoped that Fishbourne would yet be successful 
with Jennie, in spite of Bill Anspach’s money. 

Fishbourne’s mishap at the hunt the day before ; 
Jennie’s solicitude for his recovery, and something 

m 


1 82 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

in her face, all contributed to urge him on. It 
was his opportunity — the first since his rebuff at 
Tuxedo Lake ; instinctively he seized it. 

He was telling Jennie what a mortification it was 
to him that he was not a good rider. He was 
determined to learn at once. 

“ Oh ! Mr. Fishbourne,” she answered, you are 
not a popinjay like most of the men, there is 
more in you than tennis and fox hunting. You — ” 
then she checked herself. 

Fishbourne gave her a glance, and looking down 
at the grass, he said. “ Are you flattering me ? I 
want to tell you something that is true, something 
you cannot be ignorant of — I love you.” 

He looked up at her — “ Let us go,” Jennie 
replied, quickly rising. 

“ Oh, no, you must answer me,” he pleaded, 
standing beside her. 

^‘Wait and let me think,” she whispered. 

Just then a stray tennis ball fell at their feet. 
Fishbourne picked it up awkwardly with his un- 
injured left hand, and tossed it to the players. As 
he came back, Jennie’s half averted face had a 
haggard look. 

She turned to him as he stood and waited. She 
said, “ I must speak to you.” She was silent for an 
instant and held her breath, “ I must speak to you,” 
she began again with a gasp. It cannot be. When 
you know me, you cannot love me.” 

“ I not love you,” Fishbourne answered impa- 
tiently, “ please do come away,” and she followed 


SHE TELLS HLM. 183 

him to a bench on the lawn, out of hearing but in 
sight of the players, 

“Jennie,” he began passionately as they sat down. 
“ I love you, and I believe you love me. Say you 
love me,” and he overpowered her for an instant 
with a look. He would have caught her in his 
arms had they been alone, but the restraint held 
her distant from him, a beautiful phantom of 
passionate love and hope. 

There was a momentary mist before Jennie’s eyes, 
she dreamed she had fallen on his breast. But 
quickly rose up in her mind, like a cold veil of 
woven steel between her breast and his, the 
thought of her secret — her tainted blood. 

Then all Fishbourne had said of himself at 
Tuxedo Lalce, — his family, his hopes and aims, his 
pride of birth, all, all passed before her. And 
she — what was she ? She must tell him. 

Yes, she must tell him, for she loved him, she 
must be faithful to truth with him. Ah ; but his 
pride would make him hate her, when he knew the 
disgraceful secret — her proud Fishbourne ! 

Then came a quick revulsion of feeling from 
tender love to black despair, and a voice whispered 
to her sharply, “ You are a fool to tell your secret 
to this man.” She answered back from her heart, 
“ I love him. I must tell him the truth, and let 
him spurn me then.” 

In an instant she looked up at Fishbourne 
with desperate despair in her pale face. “ Mr. 
Fishbourne,!’ she said in a faint voice, “it 


184 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

can never be, you cannot make the sacrifice 
for me.” 

“ Sacrifice ! ” replied Fishbourne, “ Sacrifice, in 
loving you Jennie — Jennie, do not trifle with me, 
be true to yourself. — You love me — I know you 
do — ido not bring misery to us both, for the money 
of William Anspach. Tell me the truth. You 
love me.” As he said this the tips of his fingers 
touched her hand for an instant. 

“ Mr. Fishbourne,” she answered in a husky 
voice, “ the sacrifice — the sacrifice is this — my 
mother was a Virginia slave.” 

He looked at her as if he were dreaming. 
“ You ” — he said. 

My mother was born a negro slave. General 
Andersen is my father,” she faltered as her eyes 
filled with blinding tears. 

Mr. Fishbourne, Mr. Fishbourne, Mrs. Ans- 
pach is calling you from Newport oh the telephone,” 
cried Mrs. Hardenberg as she approached them. 

They both rose, with a start. Fishbourne, try- 
ing to realize what had happened, walked away. 
Near the players Jennie walking swiftl}^, overtook 
him. “ Mr. Fishbourne,” she said, in a low voice, 
“ do not stop. Go on, all is over between us. It 
could never be for you. Good-bye, do not stop”; 
and she rejoined Mrs. Hardenberg, as Fishbourne 
went mechanically on. 

As they walked back to the piazza, Mrs. Harden- 
berg broke out with a long sigh. 

“ I am tired of life,” Jennie said. . 


SHE TELLS HIM. 


185 

“Take my advice,” answered Mrs. Hardenberg 
“ don’t throw away the love of a noble fellow like 
Tom Fishbourne for that common Dutchman Bill 
Anspach with his money. Don’t be bought.” 

Fishbourne was an unhappy man from the hour 
he fled from Narragansett with the poor girl’s — 
“ My mother was born a negro slave,” ringing in 
his ears. 

It took days for his heart to realize the full force 
of her words. “ My mother was born a negro 
slave in Virginia. General Andersen is my father.” 
In plain English. “ I am a negress. My negro 
mother was not my father’s wife.” 

Did Fishbourne feel bound to ask her more ? 
No — her words were resolved into plain tangible 
fact in his mind, as he thought over it all — they 
solved what always had been the mystery to him 
in the Andersens. It was plain now. 

And could it be that he, a Fishbourne, was 
entangled in such meshes of love. Yes ! and the 
beautiful woman he loved, loved him so deeply 
that she could not cheat in love, and her honesty 
had blasted his hopes forever. 

“ Marry her ! a Fishbourne marry a negress.” 
The horror in his breast drove love away, to come 
again with Jennie’s image while he slept. 

Luckily for him there was plenty of work in New 
York, and his partner Simmons was rejoiced to see 
him back in town so early. 

Fishbourne has come home to tell me he is to 
marry the Southern heiress. Miss Andersen, Sim- 
mons thought. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


THE HOUSE OF OLD MASTERS. 


ES, my dear,” said Mrs. Hardenberg to her 



1 husband just before their return to town 
from Narragansett, “ I think we certainly ought to 
take the house in Fifty-sixth Street, that Mr. 
Homer, the agent, described to me to-day. It is a 
great injury to us to live in Sixteenth Street, near 
your poor relations. We ought to be close to the 
Anspachs ; it would give us a better position.” 

“ But the rent is $4500,” answered Grosvenor 
Hardenberg, petulantly ; “ $2000 more than we 
are paying now. Where am I to get the money ?” 

“ Oh, you will make it this year, you know you 
will,” replied Mrs. Hardenberg. What is a man 
good for in New York who will not run a little 
risk ? And then, remember that I am going abroad 
next summer, to economize. You will not have a 
season at Newport to pay for.” 

Little notice .has been taken of Mr. Grosvenor 
Hardenberg in this history, for the reason that at 
home he was the mere echo of his wife, and away 
from home there was nothing in his life that was 
interesting. It was drive, drive, drive, down-town 
and in the club, night and day, for this man’s favor 
to get brokerages, and for that man’s secret infor- 


THE HOUSE OF OLD MA STEFS. 


187 


mation to enter into wild speculation on the stock 
exchange, that brought Hardenberg when lucky 
$25,000 per annum, to be consumed in fine dinners, 
and worn in silks and satins, and wasted in show, 
as the family went along through the year. What 
a life it was, imitating or vying with one’s betters 
in dollars and cents, while the wolf of want howled 
at the door, to the tune of an expenditure of 
$25,000 a year. 

What is called “ standing ” in the metropolis of 
the United States does not carry with it the power 
to rob the tailor, the butcher, and the grocer, as the 
rank of a gentleman does among the grave aristo- 
cracies of the old world. In New 'York a man 
must pay as he goes, or at least show his ability to 
do so. His bank account is his rank. He may 
drive with a Vanderbilt, or hob-nob with an Astor to- 
day, but he must be able to pay cash down for his 
living to-morrow, or get nothing more, just like 
the hired man who shovels coal. All very fair, but 
it is hard for the many, who otherwise would live 
serenely like princes one year, on the hopes of the 
next. 

Grosvenor Hardenberg felt the need of cash 
more keenly since the alliance with the Anspachs, 
who held him and his wife at bay with bitter con- 
tempt. This the Hardenbergs had to bear uncom- 
plainingly, while holding up their heads stiffly be- 
fore the world, and doubling their expenditures, in 
obedience to the requirements of the Anspach con- 
nection. 


r88 NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 

Mrs. Hardenberg carried her point, as usual 
with her husband, and the house in Fifty-sixth 
Street was hired at $4500 a year. A month later, 
she welcomed Mortimor and Elsie to her new house, 
in a room almost as richly furnished as the Ans- 
pachs’ drawing-room. Her pictures included some 
subjects by well-known modern artists, and by a 
piece of finesse she had obtained a number of paint- 
ings by the old masters — a Virgin Mary by Murillo, 
The Street of Sorrow by Ribera, a Rubens, a 
Titian, and a Vanderweyden ; all of which she had 
hired at an annual cost, not much greater than the 
rent she paid to Steinway for her grand piano. 

It all came about in this way. His Highness, 
Don Alfonso Velasquez, Duke of Alicante, being 
pressed for cash in his castle in Spain, bethought 
himself of his Murillos and Titians that hung in the 
ancient banquet hall. In due time, the pictures 
found their way to New York for sale, accompanied 
by Don Alfonso himself, and the Duke placed them 
to be sold with the well-known auctioneers, Messrs. 
Sharp & Co. 

Circulars were printed describing the great works 
by the old masters, while the newspapers vied with 
each other in their editorial columns, as to which 
should deserve the longest advertisement, by the 
most fulsome praise of the ancient Spanish col- 
lection, and by the longest account of the person 
and ancestry of the noble Don Alfonso. 

For a week the newspapers’ praise of the pictures 
and of the Spanish grandee went merrily on. But 


189 


THE HOUSE Of old MASTERS. 

alas, the week ended it all. Don Alfonso would 
not advertise the sale extensively. In fact, he 
limited his agents to five dollars per diem for 
each of the leading newspapers. He had a great 
opinion of Don Alfonso, and very little idea of 
how public opinion was manufactured by adver- 
tisement. 

In vain Messrs. Sharp & Co., knelt before him 
advocating an expenditure of hundreds of dollars 
per diem in advertising. The dried up little 
Spaniard was obdurate and thought they were try- 
ing to cheat him. 

The result was inevitable. The enterprising 
editors soon discovered that no money could be 
made from Don Alfonso, and in a few days, ad- 
verse criticisms of the collection were published. 
Then it was said that none of the paintings were 
originals, which was probably true ; and finally it 
was announced that His Highness Don Alfonso 
Velasquez, Duke of Alicante, had married his cook 
ten years before in his turreted castle in Spain, 
which probably was not true, but it effectually 
ruined the sale of the paintings. When the auction 
took place there was only a band of jokers present, 
to ridicule the ugly old Spaniard and his poor 
copies. 

Messrs. Sharp & Co., held the pictures as security 
for a sum that the Spanish grandee had drawn for a 
month’s fast life in New York. As he could not 
pay his debt, there was nothing for the auctioneers 
to do but to keep the paintings, and put them away 


190 j\rOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

till the unfortunate sale was forgotten by the 
public. 

Mrs. Hardenberg knew Sharp well, and she con- 
trived to hire seven of the pictures for a year, as 
has been related. 

A well-known picture is like a much talked-of 
man ; he is what his reputation is, which is always 
quite different from the real man himself. 

So Mrs. Hardenberg had paintings that were 
Murillos and Titians. As Murillos and Titians 
they were old and genuine, of course — no one had 
time or knowledge to doubt it — and while people 
did not value old masters very highly, they were 
appropriate in the Hardenbergs’ drawing-room, for 
it was thought that blue blood took naturally to old 
pictures. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


JENNIE IS ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED. 

A MAN drunk with the fumes of his prosperity 
in money-making is not uncommon. Groups 
of men you see gorged with success, to whom 
millions have come quickly, either from the sudden 
development of huge enterprises, or on the track 
that follows the failure of schemes that bring wide- 
spread disaster to the over hopeful, and wealth to 
those who prey on other men’s misfortunes. For 
disaster is wealth to the bear, as surely as pros- 
perity is wealth to the bull. 

The bear sells stocks in times of prosperity at a 
hundred dollars a share, and hopes to buy them 
back in times of adversity at twenty-five dollars 
a share. On the other hand, the bull buys at 
twenty-five dollars a share in adversity and counts 
on selling at a hundred dollars in prosperity. If 
adversity frown, the bear is gorged and the bull 
goes starving. If Providence smile, and the crops 
are large, prosperity pastures the bull in clover and 
the bear lives on carrion. 

The game requires a man who will say calmly to 
himself : “ This time next year I shall either be 
living in a palace on Fifth Avenue, or my wife and 
I will keep cheap boarders in Jersey City.” 

igi 


192 NOT OP HER FATHER'S RACE. 

There are thousands of these people in the whirl- 
pool of speculation. 

Occasionally a lucky one finds himself, he knows 
not exactly how, the sudden possessor of a hundred 
times the wealth his dreams have pictured. Then 
he walks forth a changed man, drunk with pros- 
perity. 

Horace tells a living truth when he says : 

Prometheus when he moulded man, 

Saw his foul mud dried brittle, 

And while he o’er and o’er began, 

He failed, in spite of clay and spittle. 

At length a happy thought he hit. 

From hearts of beasts that roved four-footed 
He slices cut ; chopped fine each bit. 

To temper well his mud it suited. 

And hence it is, that mankind all, 

On this fair rounded planet dwelling, 

Feel, when they in temptation fall. 

The heart of beast within them swelling. 

And as the predominant animal in every breast is 
called forth by a stomach full of undigested pros- 
perity, the man with brain filled with the fumes of 
his sudden success in money-making, may be a 
tiger, a wolf or an ass. 

Andersen and Bill Anspach were drunk with 
success that autumn. Seldom before had there 
been such profits from wild schemes in Wall Street. 

The effects on the two men were widely different. 
Andersen grew more silent and secretive. He 
passed with head erect and eyes straight before 


JENNY IS ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED, 193 

him from haunt to haunt, in Wall Street. Bill 
Anspach was filled with vulgar pride. He was 
loud and over-bearing and went about with a strut. 

John Anspach laughed at his son, and told Wil- 
helmina that Bill was not made of as good stuff as 
they had supposed. He cannot stand prosperity ; 
he talks too much. I told him the other day that 
he would make people think our bank was specula- 
ing in stocks, if he did not stop bragging about the 
money he had made.” 

The poet is mistaken when he tells us, that all 
thoughts, all passions, all delights, feed the flame 
of love in man. A sudden accession of wealth and 
the contemplation of that accession is not favorable 
to love. The money passion at its height entirely 
overmasters the tender flame, as it did with Ander- 
sen and Bill. 

Andersen forgot for weeks that such people as 
the Hardenbergs existed, often passing Maud and 
her mother in the street without recognizing them. 

Bill Anspach was just as bad, Jennie did not see 
him for a month. He spent all his evenings at the 
club, and in the corridors of an up town hotel, the 
nightly resort of speculators, where he was always 
the center of an admiring crowd of small fry. 

He was, indeed, much talked about and wor- 
shipped as a rising financier. “ What a good man 
he would be for Secretary of the Treasury,” they 
all said, “ or for any office in the gift of the people, 
worth buying.” 

But everything must have an end. In a little 


194 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


while speculation declined and the stock market 
settled down to dullness, when Andersen and Bill 
came slowly back to their friends again. 

There was a change at the Andersens. Fish- 
bourne came no more, and Bill Anspach delightecT 
his mother by being seen quite often in the after- 
noon driving with Jennie. 

Poor Jennie, she passed Fishbourne one day, as 
she- and Bill drove through Riverside Park. Bill 
bowed to Fishbourne with a triumphant air as much 
as to say, “ She refused you, and she is mine,” and 
in fact she was his, for Jennie had accepted him 
that very day. 

What a change there was in the girl. How 
haughty and self-possessed she was with Bill. Had 
she told him the history of her birth ? Nonsense, 
it was Bill, not Fishbourne. She had loyed Fish- 
bourne. She was making a bargain with Bill, and 
it corrupted her. 

A woman making a bargain of marriage, has a 
business in hand that calls for a close mouth and 
good management. 

“ Let Bill Anspach find out the secret for him- 
self some day. My father is the proper person to 
tell the story and make an explanation if it ever 
becomes necessary, and he certainly has money 
enough to make an entirely satisfactory one to Bill 
Anspach,” Jennie said to herself. 

There were no more thoughts of Miss Gilling- 
ham. The Virginia memories were blotted out. 

Rich, beautiful, and engaged to be married to 


JENNY IS ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED. 195 

Bill Anspach, Jennie Andersen was envied by every 
girl in town. Had people known the rest of her 
story, how they would have opened their eyes. 

What joy there was in the Anspach household 
over the engagement. Such a shake Wilhelmina 
gave General Andersen’s clammy hand, that his 
wrist was lame for a week. 

Elsie, enraptured, hurried with Mortimor to the 
Albemarle, the first evening after the announce- 
ment of the engagement. “ Oh, Jennie,” she cried, 
kissing her, “ I am so happy. My brother is such 
a splendid fellow ; such a composed, aristocratic 
man, and so handsome, isn’t he ? What a splendid 
couple you will make. I always knew you two 
would make a match of it.” 

Bill Anspach did not condescend to ask General 
Andersen’s consent to the engagement. No allu- 
sion was made to it by either of the men, who were 
constantly together down-town, while Bill went in 
and out of the Andersens’ apartments in the hotel 
with easy familiarity. 

The engagement was a great blow to Mrs. 
Hardenberg. It was true she always expected it, 
but still she had hoped against hope that Fish- 
bourne would be successful. 

Now her enemy Bill was in the Andersen strong- 
hold, that she was besieging for Maud. 

She and Maud had a talk over the situation of 
affairs one evening, after a silent visit of an hour 
from Andersen. Maud said she did not believe 
that Bill Anspach’s engagement to Jennie would 


196 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

make any diiference in the General’s friendship for 
them. 

A day or two afterwards they were mortified 
to hear of a family dinner-party that had taken 
place at the Anspachs the night before. And 
Mortimor, their Mortimor, who told them of it, did 
not seem to think it strange that, although he and 
Elsie and the Andersens were there, Maud and his 
mother had not been invited. Alas, Mortimor had 
long since learned to think that his mother was no 
credit to him. 

As Maud had predicted. General Andersen 
remained faithful to the Hardenbergs. Indeed, 
he came oftener than formerly. Maud had dis- 
covered that he liked a clay pipe. (Black Lucy 
had taught him this in the Virginia cabin.) No 
gentleman would smoke anything but Havana 
cigars at the Albemarle, so Maud had a pipe and 
tobacco always ready for him, and the intimacy 
continued. 

The intimacy continued, but not without violent 
opposition from Wilhelmina. She always spoke of 
the Hardenbergs as the paupers of Fifty-sixth 
Street, and hearing from Elsie that Andersen 
smoked a pipe at the Hardenbergs in the even- 
ing, she held her little nose between finger and 
thumb whenever she met him, and asked whether 
he had come from the paupers of Fifty-sixth 
Street. 

No wonder that Jennie disliked and opposed her 
father’s intimacy with Maud, when Bill had taken 


JENNY IS ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED. 197 

great trouble to show her that the Hardenbergs 
were in hot pursuit of the General’s money. 

But all this opposition had no effect. Andersen’s 
vanity was gratified when he heard himself spoken 
of as the admirer of a young woman, and this was 
reason enough for him to Continue his visits to 
Maud, if he had no other. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


POKONO AND SWEETWATER. 

T he life of the speculator is a never-ending 
series of golden vistas of temptation, down 
which he madly rushes in succession. 

It was not long before Bill Anspach had a new 
and brilliant enterprise on foot, and he found no 
difficulty in interesting Andersen in it. The enter- 
prise was the Pokono Mountain and Sweetwater 
Iron and Railroad Company. 

Pokono Mountain was a hill in Missouri, said to 
be composed of nothing but Bessemer steel ore, 
with a few rocks on top to cover the treasures 
within, as the crust hides the riches of a deep dish 
apple pie. Pokono Mountain, however, was so 
far from a railroad, that its immense wealth had 
not been developed beyond the digging of a few 
watery holes. But there was the mountain said to 
be full of Bessemer ore, and there was the Sweet- 
water Railroad, laid out on paper, three hundred 
miles to the great Missouri Pacific line. 

Bill Anspach and General Andersen bought the 
mountain. Then they organized a company, with 
an immense capital, to build the Sweetwater Rail- 
road. 

It required a heavy expenditure of money to get 
198 


POKONO AND S WEE T WA TER. 199 

the scheme going. The mountain cost a great 
sum, the railroad would cost many millions more. 
To induce people to subscribe their money in 
the purchase of bonds and stock, it was necessary 
to make a large outlay in cash, not only to begin 
the construction of the road, but also in the employ, 
ment of newspapers and experts to write up the 
enterprise for the public. 

The long newspaper articles and the glowing 
advertisements that were printed, gave Andersen 
and Bill a temporary notoriety that was solid fame 
in their estimation. It was predicted that the 
Pokono and Sweetwater Iron and Railroad Com- 
pany, besides carrying the Bessemer steel of the 
mountain, would be overburdened with coal and 
agricultural products from the Sweetwater Valley, 
and would surpass the famous Lehigh coal andiron 
mines of Pennsylvania, in productivity. General 
Andersen and Bill Anspach were hailed as the 
Coal and Metal Kings of New York. 

General Andersen, the President of the New 
Company, was nicknamed “ Old Pokono ” in Wall 
Street. As rich as Old Pokono ” became a com- 
mon expression. 

At first John Anspach, the Bank President, would 
not join the new enterprise. He said his day was 
over for new schemes. He was willing however to 
lend Bill and Andersen the Bank’s money, secured 
by bonds of the Pokono Company, and he helped 
them in a thousand ways with his influence and 
advice. 


200 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


But by-and-by, when the construction of the road 
began, when the subscriptions were pouring in, 
and Bill had a building occupied entirely by the 
great Pokono and Sweetwater Company, the per- 
sonal importance acquired by being connected with 
such a great enterprise, was too strong a tempta- 
tion for the old man to resist ; he became Vice- 
president at the same great salary received by 
Andersen. Bill, as second Vice-president, also 
drew a comfortable allowance for his valuable ser- 
vices to the Company. 

These were active times in the Pokono Com- 
pany’s offices. Capitalists, advertising agents, and 
brokers were coming and going all day long. It 
was almost as difficult for an ordinary individual 
to gain an interview with Andersen or Bill, as 
it was to see the President of the United States 
alone. They were hidden together in a big room 
in the innermost recesses of the Pokono building. 
No man could approach them, without first detail- 
ing the object of his visit on a card printed for the 
purpose, and thein cooling his heels for half an 
hour in the ante-chamber till he was summoned. 

John Anspach, in his bank, refused to talk of the 
affairs of Pokono, with any but the select few. But 
now and then, during the day, he might be seen 
popping in and out of the Company’s offices, and 
everybody felt that he was the mainstay of the great 
enterprise. 

Young Mortimor Hardenberg filled the impor- 
tant position of paying teller of the Anspach Bank. 


POKONO AND SWEETWATER. 2b 1 

He had developed into a tall, slim fellow, dressed 
in the height of the fashion, with a sharp eye and 
long fingers, that ran over a pile of bank bills or a 
column of figures, like lightning. He was prosper- 
ing with Pokono. So was Grosvenor Hardenberg, 
his father. The public took it for granted that the 
father must have a finger in the pie with his son’s 
relatives. When he joined John Anspach in the 
street on the way down-town, and walked with the 
banker, pocketing his insults without a quiver, 
people thought the two men were in deep consul- 
tation over the interests -of Pokono ; and this gave 
Hardenberg a fresh start in public estimation. 

General Andersen’s friendship was of real, sub- 
stantial value to the Hardenbergs. It was not to 
be expected, that the friendly feeling that brought 
the General to their house, would be proof against 
the wiles of the two ladies, when they tried to 
pump Wall-street secrets from him. Maud and her 
mother talked Pokono as much as they dared with 
him, and got many a hint from the little he said, that 
enabled Grosvenor Hardenberg to speculate suc- 
cessfully in the great Anspach enterprise of Pokono 
and Sweetwater. 

There was a dinner-party at the Anspachs’. 
Strange to say, all the Hardenbergs were there. 

The reason for this assemblage was Mrs. Ans- 
pach’s sudden desire to have peace and good-will 
prevail throughout the entire family connection, 
and this desire arose solely from the delay in the 
marriage of her son Bill and Jennie Andersen. 


202 


NOT OF HER. FATHER'S RACE. 


For some reason, that Wilhelmina could not 
fathom, Jennie did not wish to be married at once. 
Bill told his mother that he had pressed her as hard 
on the subject as he could, but without giving any 
reason, Jennie always insisted that they had better 
wait. Nothing more than this could Wilhelmina 
extract from Bill. 

“ Oh, you are too full of Pokono and Sweetwater 
affairs to make love to a girl,” Wilhelmina said, 
“ I’ll speak to Jennie myself.” 

And so on the first opportunity she did speak to 
Jennie and the. reply was : “I’ll be married when 
I think proper, Mrs. Anspach,” with a haughty toss 
of the head. 

Bill’s mother was in despair. Could it be possi- 
ble that the engagement would end in nothing ? 
Not only was it possible, but very probable, she 
thought. John and she were married the week 
after, she had said “ Yes”;* and she always thought 
from this, that true love brooked no delay. Yet 
she could not think it possible that Jennie did not 
love such a splendid fellow as her Bill; and Bill 
seemed anxious enough to be married, whether he 
loved Jennie or not. 

Wilhelmina vainly cast about in her mind for 
the cause of the delay. Could General Andersen 
or her enemies, the Hardenbergs, have anything to 
do with it ? How could that be ? For even if 
General Andersen were secretly opposed to the 
marriage, which she did not believe possible, still 
she felt sure that his wishes would have no more 


POKONO AND SWEETWATER. 203 

weight with Jennie than a straw, if she desired to 
be married. 

The dangerous situation of affairs made Wilhel- 
mina suspicious of every one. She feared the influ- 
ence of the Hardenbergs against her with General 
Andersen. Could she make them forget her in- 
sults? Of course she could ; it was to their interest 
to be on good terms with her, she thought. The 
dinner was Wilhelmina’s first step toward the 
renewal of friendly relations with the Harden- 
bergs. 

John Anspach had spent thousands of dollars 
that summer in remodeling his dining-room. The 
plan and ornamentation were by Mr. Sappington 
Dod, the great architect. 

Dod had outdone himself for his patron. The 
room was seventy-five feet long and thirty in 
breadth, with a huge fire-place lined with delicate 
porcelain tiles. The panels of the walls were of 
oak, beautifully carved in the fashion of three hun- 
dred years ago. Above, was a frieze of old paint- 
ings representing scenes in Roman history, and in 
the center of the ceiling was set an immense fresco 
of Jupiter, hurling his thunderbolts. By special 
request of Wilhelmina, the god had been given the 
face of General Washington, taken from Houdon’s 
cast of the Father of his Country. 

The table was a great mahogany affair, with legs 
carved to represent open-mouthed porpoises. 

Opposite the fire-place, the huge sideboard, 
glittering with gold, silver, and cut glass, towered 


204 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

to the ceiling, like the mosque of Solyman the 
Magnificent. 

John and Wilhelmina had spent on this room 
twice the sum, which at interest would have sup- 
ported them comfortably in the first years of their 
married life. 

Wilhelmina, with a smile meant to be gracious, 
but which was condescending, told Mrs. Harden- 
berg and Maud, as they came downstairs, that the 
dinner was given especially to show the new ban- 
quet hall to them. 

“ What makes the woman so polite ?” the mother 
whispered to her daughter, “ I cannot understand 
her sudden change.” 

‘‘ The oak room must remind her of her oak 
wash-tubs before she grew rich, and she feels herself 
honored to have us here,” Maud sneered. 

But, indeed, they were both mystified by the 
invitation of Wilhelmina. What could she be try- 
ing to do. 

Elsie kissed her mother-in-law affectionately. 
It pleased the sweet, little woman to have Mor- 
timer’s relatives in her father’s house. 

Jennie was astonished to see the Hardenbergs. 
How angry she would have been had she known 
they were invited, because Wilhelmina feared that 
in some way they might delay Bill’s marriage. 
When Wilhelmina seated General Andersen be- 
tween Mrs. Hardenberg and Maud, Jennie looked 
daggers at Bill. 

Before going farther in this history, it is well to 


POKONO AND SWEETWATER. 205 

relate the reason why Jennie would not name her 
marriage day. She did not love Bill Anspach. 
Did she love any one else ? Pride she thought had 
rescued her heart, seared and hardened after its 
trial with Fishbourne. He came no more to her, 
save in her dreams by day and by night. She 
expected to marry Bill Anspach when it suited her 
pleasure, but just now she found it agreeable to 
excite the envy of the world by keeping him dawd- 
ling at her heels. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

THE LITTLE TEACHER. 

W HEN General Andersen and his daughter 
reached their apartments in the Albemarle, 
that night, there was a familiar figure standing at 
the drawing-room window watching the lighted 
streets. It was Miss Gillingham. Jennie, with an 
exclamation of delight, caught the teacher in her 
arms. Andersen shook hands stiffly with her, and 
then busied himself turning on all the electric 
lights. 

The little teacher could not hide her embarrass- 
ment in the presence of the beautiful, magnificently 
dressed woman, whom she had so often chided as a 
girl in the negro school. Andersen saw what was 
passing in her mind, and gratified vanity loosed his 
silent tongue. 

“ Well, Miss Gillingham,” he said, “ what can 
Miss Andersen and I do for you ? ” 

The little teacher turned her face to him. In an 
instant all her embarrassment was gone. There he 
stood, the same miserable creature she had known, 
living half-starved with negroes in the log cabin in 
Virginia. What to her was the luck that had 
brought him gold in the grave-yard, and millions 
in Wall Street ? What to her were his vain airs, 
206 


THE LITTLE TEACHER. 207 

his English cut clothes, and flowing whiskers ? His 
weak face, a little more lined by time, was still 
there, and whether clothed in purple and fine linen 
or threadbare in rags, he was the same Andersen 
still ; the physical inferior of his former negro com- 
panions, the moral inferior of his white brethren. 

What could he do for her, she thought, as she 
regarded him with her great, brown eyes. 

“ You can do nothing for me, Mr. Andersen,” 
she answered, pressing her hand against her broad 
forehead. “ I came to Philadelphia for a few days 
to attend the Teachers Convention, and,” turning 
to Jennie, “ I so longed to see your daughter once 
more, before the world parted us forever, that I 
came to New York for the first time in my life, ex- 
pecting to return in an hour. I have been waiting 
here all the evening for her. I have taken a room, 
and will go away to-morrow at eleven o’clock.” 

The old dread of that penetrating face came back 
to Andersen, and he marched pompously away. 

Jennie put her arms affectionately round Miss 
Gillingham and forced her to sit down, while sup- 
per was being brought. 

“ Why will you go back to-morrow ?” she asked. 
“ Stay a little while with us, New York is such an 
interesting place. I will not let you come here for 
the first time in your life, and go away without see- 
ing the great city, and I shall be so glad to have 
you with me. Miss Gillingham. Indeed, you do 
not know how often I think of you ; I am deeply 
sensible of my obligations to you. Why cannot you 


2o8 not of her FATHER'S RACE. 

live with us always ? " she whispered, kissing her 
while sincere tears filled her eyes. 

The little teacher, sobbing, took Jennie’s hand 
and kissed it. “ Darling girl, I knew you had not 
forgotten me. How I have prayed for your wel- 
fare. What a break in my life your going was ; 
you were my only hope. I never doubted that you 
loved me still, when your letters did not come. 
Now, that I have seen I was right, I shall go back 
to my work among the negroes, happier for the im- 
pulse that brought me here, to learn the truth from 
your lips, and see you for the last time ; for Jennie, 
life has separated us. How can you know a teacher 
in a negro school ? 

“ I stay in New York with you, my darling, and 
live with you ? You cannot mean it when you ask 
me. How could I be happy here, even if I had the 
money ? My work, while I live, is to teach the 
negro. You see that I am no longer young,” she 
said, smiling faintly and pressing her hand on her 
gray head. 

She paused for a moment, and then a playful 
smile broke over her s&d face as she said : “ I never 
dreamed, Jennie, that I was bringing you up to be 
such a woman of fashion as I now see you. You 
know I was born a Quaker, and they do not approve 
of worldly living and showy dress.” 

The night wore on. The confused hum in the 
streets died away to silence, but still they sat, for- 
getful of the day that was to part them. Miss 
Gillingham listened with deep interest to Jen- 


THE LITTLE TEACHER. 


209 


nie’s description of Mr. William Anspach, her 
betrothe'd. His wealth, position and abilities were 
dwelt on with fervor. Then came the details of 
Jennie’s life in New York, much of which the 
teacher could not appreciate ; it was another world 
to her. The tears started in her eyes as she saw the 
impassable gulf between them. 

“ Never mind, dear child,” she said, as Jennie 
paused, “ I can’t help crying a little.” 

Miss Gillingham avoided saying much about her 
home. But when Jennie ceased to talk of herself, 
the questions about Virginia fell thick and fast. 
Where was old Auntie Emma ? Gone with the tide 
that swept the negroes West, no one knew where. 
Abraham Lincoln Jones, Jennie’s playmate, had 
never been heard from. Poor old Mrs. Erskine 
died in the rickety Manor. Mr. Hood was now 
the leader of the negro followers of General Billy 
Mahone, in eastern Virginia. 

Last of all, Jennie asked about Harry Erskine. 

“ He is a drummer for a firm in Baltimore,” 
Miss Gillingham replied ; “ he travels a great deal 
all over the country, they tell me. He has not 
been in Lunenberg since you went away. Have 
you never heard of him in New York ? ” she asked, 
looking anxiously at Jennie. 

“ No,” Jennie answered sharply. ’ 

Harry Erskine’s father told me that his son 
had seen Mr. Andersen in New York,” the teacher 
said. 

“ My father never says a word to me about 


210 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


any one he meets ; in fact he never talks at all,’' 
Jennie laughed. 

“ I want to put you on your guard against 
Erskine,” Miss Gillingham replied impressively. 

From what his father says, I am sure he has 
watched you and knows all about you. He must 
often come to New York and may do you an injury 
here. You know what a bad fellow he is.” 

They did not speak for a few minutes. Miss 
Gillingham was absorbed in thought. At length 
she looked up with an embarrassed manner, that 
quickly passed away. “ Jennie,” she whispered in 
a tender voice, “ tell me that you have told Mr. 
William Anspach ail about your birth.” 

Jennie’s face flushed as she gave Miss Gilling- 
ham a glance of proud self-reliance. The glance 
was her only answer. 

Then the bell of a neighboring church struck 
three and Miss Gillingham rose with a sigh. “ It 
will soon be dawn,” she said in a trembling voice. 

Jennie went with her to the room she had en- 
gaged. “ You must leave the hotel by ten o’clock. 
I will call you at nine, and take you down in the 
carriage after breakfast,” Jennie said cheerfully, 
as she kissed the teacher. 

When Jennie had gone. Miss Gillingham sat at 
the window for a few minutes, looking at the glare 
of the great city’s lights in the narrow space of sky 
between the tall buildings. Then, without undress- 
ing, she lay down for an hour. At four o’clock she 
rose, packed her small bag, and descending the 


THE LITTLE TEACHER. 


2II 


stairs, paid the bill to the sleepy clerk, who asked 
no questions, as she passed out into the darkness. 

The policeman under the corner gaslight stared 
suspiciously at the solitary woman inquiring the 
way to the Pennsylvania Railroad Ferry, who told 
him that she was going South on the six o’clock 
train. He looked at her bag, and warned her that 
she might be robbed walking alone in the city at 
that early hour. 

“ There are no cars running yet,” he said. 

“ Then I must walk,” the teacher replied, as she 
started on. But the policeman followed her and 
insisted on conducting her to the next officer whose 
beat lay in her path, and so she was handed on 
through the dark streets, from one policeman to 
another till she reached the depot and was gone. 

At nine o’clock in the morning Jennie found the 
teacher’s room empty and on the bureau lay a note. 

“ Good-by, dear child, I cannot bear a part- 
ing with you. When yau read this I shall be far 
on my journey.” 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE RUIN OF POKONO. 

A bout that time there swept over the United 
States an unaccountable lull in the material 
growth of the country. One of the periodic spells 
of trade depression, that regularly every few years 
takes possession of the inhabitants of the most 
hopeful land on the globe, had begun. 

“ What is the matter, we are going to ruin,” 
every one cried. 

“ Bad legislation and the high tariff are bank- 
rupting us,” answered the cynic. 

My dear sir,” replied a wise man, if bad 
legislation and a bad tariff could bankrupt the 
United States, we should have been ruined long 
ago.” 

On this occasion every industry and enterprise 
stood still or retrograded. 

The Pokono and Sweetwater Company was the 
last to suffer. The credit of the Anspachs and 
General Andersen kept it alive and prosperous, 
long after everything else had fallen into the slough 
of despond. 

But this could not last, the enterprise was not 
half finished, and it had nothing to show in earn- 
ings, being supported entirely by new subscriptions 
from the public. 


313 


THE RUIN OF POKONO. 213 

Bill Anspach worked like a beaver. He was 
everywhere day and night, preparing glowing 
descriptions of the condition of the Pokono prop- 
erty for the newspapers, encouraging timid sub- 
scribers, and visiting capitalists with tempting offers 
for new subscriptions. 

Failing to catch the big fish, he angled for the 
little ones. He even dropped in on Fishbourne one 
day in his office, and asked him why he did not buy 
some Pokono and Sweetwater bonds a« an invest- 
ment. Fishbourne answered with a smile, that he 
had very little time to attend to his money matters, 
so busy was he in court ; but he had often thought 
of buying Pokono bonds and would look into the 
matter at once. 

“ Confound the lawyers,” Bill thought, as he 
went down the steps. “ They make money out of 
the community, and no one ever gets anything out 
of them in return. In court, the fellow says — the 
little office quill driver. I will be bound he has not 
been In court for months, not since he courted 
Jennie Andersen and lost his case.” 

That night Bill met Amory at the club. They sat 
down to dinner together. Old Abbot, the princi- 
pal stockholder in Amory’s newspaper, had a large 
amount of Pokono bonds that he had bought from 
Bill a long time before, at half the price paid for 
them by other people, with the understanding 
thrown in on Abbot’s part, that he would help the 
sale of Pokono, by puffing the enterprise in the 
Enquirer. While Amory and Bill were eating their 


214 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

dessert, Bill introduced the subject of the rail- 
road : 

“ How is Pokono getting along in these hard 
times ? ” Amory asked. “ I have often wondered 
whether the present financial troubles would inter- 
fere with such a sound enterprise as yours.” 

“ We are prosperous,” replied Bill. “And Amory, 
we can sell you some Pokono bonds, low. As you 
are an editor, I will put you down for a lot at the 
same price that old Abbot paid nine months ago.” 

“ I did not know Mr. Abbot had any bonds,” 
Amory replied with a laugh. “I am a literary 
fellow and have nothing to do with railroads.” 

The next morning down went the price of Pokono 
on the Stock Exchange. Old Abbot without a 
doubt, was offering his bonds for sale in the market, 
warned by his literary fellow, Amory, that Bill and 
Pokono were in distress for money. 

The more industriously Bill Anspach worked to 
get subscriptions for Pokono, the darker affairs 
became. His father, care-worn and anxious, dis- 
couraged his activity ; while Andersen sat all day in 
the company’s private offices, pooh-poohing the bad 
condition of financial affairs, which he said would 
change in a few days. 

General Andersen often missed a week at the 
Hardenbergs now. After dinner he and Bill always 
spent long hours in consultation with John Anspach. 

Grosvenor Hardenberg told his wife that Ander- 
sen staid away, because Pokono was having a 
hard time in Wall Street, 


THE RUIN OF POKONO. 


215 


Old John Anspach and Andersen had spent as 
much of their own money as they were willing to 
spend on Pokono. They wanted subscribers, — 
they wanted other people’s money to bear the risk 
for them. They were afraid to stem the Pokono 
tide without the Public’s help. In vain Bill had 
urged that bold buying of the securities would keep 
up the price, and tide over the dangerous present. 
He did not tell them that he had bought boldly on 
his own private account when the trouble first came, 
and that his last dollar was exhausted. What a 
revelation the. truth would have been to old John 
Anspach ! His sharp son Bill, with his last dollar 
gone. 

At last Bill grew tired of conferences with cool 
old heads, that ended in nothing. 

Affairs were in this situation, when one after- 
noon, as Mortimor Hardenberg was going home, 
he accidentally met Bill coming down the bank 
steps. The meeting was premeditated on Bill’s 
part. He had been trying for a week to fall in 
with Mortimor accidentally on the way home. 

The brothers-in-law entered a cab together, and 
before the first cross street was reached, Mortimor 
was talking excitedly to his calm companion about 
Pokono and Sweetwater. 

“ I heard what you said to your father and 
General Andersen to-day, Mr. Anspach,” he said. 
“ It is a shame that they will not keep up the 
price of the bonds, by buying them in the market. 
This trouble will not last long ; Pokono bonds are 


2i6 not of her FATHER'S RACE, 

declining in price for lack of friends to support 
them. Why, the two millions of bonds that the 
bank owns show a loss of $500,000. I think 
General Andersen is more inclined to take your 
view of the matter than your father is.” 

“ That is true,” Bill replied, “ but I have no doubt 
I shall win my father over in a few days. It is a 
great chance to make a fortune. We ought to buy 
up all the securities of our road at the present low 
price.” 

“ Why don’t you buy up Pokono yourself, alone, 
Mr. Anspach ? ” Mortimor asked in a confidential 
tone. 

“ It would not be prudent,” replied Bill benig- 
nantly, thinking of the fortune he had already lost 
in that way. I have no doubt the old man will 
come round to my way of thinking in a day or two, 
and then we will make things hum. I will let you 
know how matters are going, Mortimor. It gives 
me pleasure to see you take siich an interest in our 
enterprise.” 

Then Bill let himself down to Mortimor famil- 
iarly, with small chat about the bank, in a way 
that he had never done before. When they parted 
he told Mortimor he would like him to ride up 
with him every afternoon — an immense piece of 
condescension that sent Mortimor home with his 
nose in the air, to tell Elsie that her brother Bill 
was the ablest man in New York. 

Mortimor rode up the next evening with Bill, 
who said that his father was coming round to 


THE RUIN OF POKONO. 217 

his views rapidly, and would shortly buy a lot of 
Pokonos. 

Andersen is anxious to buy too, he added, and 
altogether the prospect of a sudden rise in the bonds 
is good. “You might buy some yourself, Morti- 
mor, without any risk,” Bill added reflectively. 

“ Now, I will tell you the truth,” answered Morti- 
mer. “ Every dollar I have in the world is in Po- 
kono on a margin with a broker, and he has been 
threatening to sell me out, and ruin me, for a week.” 

“ Phew ! ” whistled Bill, “ I did not know you 
ever speculated, Mortimer.” 

He did not speak for a few moments, and Morti- 
mer, foolish fellow, fully expected an offer of a loan, 
with which he could pay his debts. 

But Bill seemed too much absorbed in the for- 
tunes of Pokono itself, to notice Mortimer’s trouble. 

“Mortimer,” he continued, “you and I can do 
all that is necessary to sustain the price of Pokono 
bonds in the market. I will come to your house 
to-night and have a quiet talk with you about it — 
Stop, it would be better if we dined together at the 
club at seven o’clock. Now, mind you do not tell 
a word of what we have been talking about to 
Elsie.” 

Bill Anspach saw his opportunity. Mortimor 
Hardenberg was in a tight place, and he felt sure 
he could make a tool of him, as he had intended 
to do. 

Mr. William Anspach, vice-president of An- 
spach’s bank, the distinguished financier, had 


2i8 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


determined to commit a crime, and it was neces- 
sary to have Mortimor for his accomplice. 

Mortimer was first teller in the bank. Bill and 
he had charge of the private vault, containing 
General Andersen’s and old John Anspach’s securi- 
ties. The son and son-in-law had different keys, 
both of which were necessary to unlock the vault. 
Bill’s aim was to gain Mortimer’s consent to take 
Andersen’s and John Anspach’s treasures in the 
private vault, to borrow money on, and then to use 
the money borrowed, in buying up Pokono bonds in 
Bill’s own name. When the Pokono bonds ad- 
vanced in price he would sell out, redeem the stolen 
securities and return them to the vault. No one 
would be the loser, he thought ; Pokono and Sweet- 
water would triumph, and he would pocket a hand- 
some fortune. 

William Anspach deliberately commit the crime 
of theft ? — Impossible ! Had the strain of manag- 
ing the great Pokono enterprise, and the rude 
shock of the loss of his money, temporarily un- 
hinged his reasoning faculties, and destroyed his 
moral equipoise ; or had he absolutely gone stark 
mad ? 

Neither of these misfortunes had befallen him. 
He was still the same cool Bill, weighing chances, 
and taking risks when he saw they were necessary 
to success. 

The reasons why William Anspach, in the full 
possession of his senses, was willing to steal, were 
these. The crime, he thought, would uphold the 


THE RUIN OF POKONO. 219 

finances of the Pokono and Sweetwater enterprise, 
and would recover for him the money he had lost. 
He felt sure of the success of his plan based on the 
theft, and when the former had been successfully 
carried out, he knew the latter would remain for- 
ever concealed. For these reasons he held the 
theft to be a legitimate act for a master-hand like 
his to perform. 

Bill was a law to himself. He had seen his 
father, as president of corporations, rob his stock- 
holders, again and again, by well-known tricks, 
that were only condemned by the thin-skinned and 
the virtuous. The theft that he proposed to com- 
mit, was no greater wrong than the robberies his 
father had committed ; the only difference being, 
that the law would punish his crime if discovered, 
while it did not reach his father’s. 

Why should a smart fellow like Bill Anspach be 
afraid to commit a secret crime, that, although con- 
demned by law, was really no more wrong than the 
acts of his respected father, when he was sure that 
the results of his crime would greatly benefit the only 
persons who would object to it — namely, his father 
and General Andersen ? Thus a thief reasoned. 

Who would have imagined, when the brothers- 
in-law were seated in the elegant dining-room of 
the club that night, that there was a theft hatch- 
ing in the mind of the dignified, patronizing Bill, 
the trusted financier, nodding easily to Fishbourne, 
who had stopped to ask Mortimor how Elsie was ? 

While they were dining. Bill’s talk was of every- 


220 


NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 


thing but Pokono ; of horses, dogs, shooting, men 
about town, till Mortimor began to fear he would 
not hear anything that evening to help him out of 
his money troubles. Dinner over. Bill proposed a 
walk up Fifth Avenue. 

As soon as they were in the street, he plunged at 
once into the subject. 

Mortimor, you and I have got to take care of 
Pokono in the market. My father and General 
Andersen are too old to look out for it. They 
yesterday gave me filll authority to go ahead and 
do whatever I thought was necessary. You and I 
must do the business together.” 

“ What are we to do ?” asked Mortimor briskly. 

“ Borrow money on some of my father’s and 
Andersen’s securities now in the vault,” replied Bill 
slowly, “and buy up Pokono stock and bonds. 
When the market advances we can sell out, make a 
fortune, and put my father’s and the General’s 
securities under lock and key again.” 

There was a dead silence for a minute, as the 
two men walked together. Mortimor breathed 
quickly with ^citement. He was on the point of 
saying, “ Mr. Anspach, neither you nor I have any 
right to take the securities out of your father’s 
vault, without written authority from him and 
General Andersen,” But the thought came to 
him, “ This is Mr. Bill Anspach, vice-president of 
the bank. He says his father and Andersen have 
given him full authority to go ahead ; it is not 
my business to ask questions. If Vice-Presi- 


THE RUIN OF POKONO. 


221 


dent Anspach is doing wrong, it is his own look- 
out. If I ask questions it may put a stop to his 
plan for advancing the price of Pokono bonds, and 
I shall not get back the money I have lost in them. 
Then, too, if I object, it will make an enemy of 
my brother-in-law and ruin my advancement in the 
bank.” 

“Well, Mortimor, what do you think of it?” 
Bill asked carelessly. 

“ I think you know best, Mr. Anspach,” Mortimor 
replied timidly. “I believe it could be done easily 
and a large fortune made.” 

“ Well, you have a level head, I see,” said Bill. 
“ Now, I want to tell you everything, for I have been 
thinking of this matter pretty hard lately. When we 
have carried through our speculation, my father will 
probably put me at the head of the bank, and then 
I will make you cashier. Furthermore, I intend to 
give you a quarter of all our profits in the specula- 
tion we are about to undertake. But remember, 
Mortimor, our success depends upon the quiet way 
in which we manage this. You must not breathe 
a word about it to my father or General Andersen, 
nor Elsie ; no one must know that we are using my 
father’s and Andersen’s treasures from the vault. 
For although they have consented to my plan, they 
are supposed to know nothing of what we do.” 

Then the absurdity of Bill Anspach’s story stared 
Mortimor in the face. It was impossible that 
John Anspach and General Andersen could have 
given him permission to take their treasures in this 


222 


NOT OF HER FATHERS S RACE, 


way. Mortimer fully realized what he before sus- 
pected — Bill was lying. Did he stop and decline 
to go« farther with the thief? Not he; he con- 
gratulated himself that he had held his tongue. 
The little fool thought to himself, “ I am not 
responsible for acts done under the direction of 
Vice-President Bill. It will be all right in the end, 
and I shall get back the money I lost.” And then 
he chuckled to himself, as he thought that he shared 
in the profits, and took none of the risk. 

The next day at ten o’clock Bill came to Morti- 
mor’s desk, and together they went down the narrow 
stairs to the bank vault. There, each with his 
separate key, they opened the big receptacle of the 
private fortunes of John Anspach and General 
Andersen. 

Ah ! it was a sight to make a New Yorker weep 
with envy. Big piles of bonds and certificates of 
stock were arranged with nice regularity, and on a 
stool were the scissors and litter left by Bill the 
week before, when he and Mortimor had fulfilled 
their duty in cutting off the coupons from a pile of' 
bonds. 

“ I think I will take these,” said Bill, coolly pack- 
ing a pile of $500,000 of New York Central bonds in 
a bag, that stood in the corner. The robbery was 
begun. 

Pokono bonds were selling at 40 per cent. The 
next day they began to advance on heavy purchases. 
John Anspach and General Andersen asked Bill 
to explain the cause of the advance. 


THE RUIN OF POKONO. 223 

I have been working hard to convince people 
they ought to buy,” he replied, “ and they are 
beginning to believe it. Everybody is buying 
Pokono, and the price will go a great deal higher.” 

“ I told you the trouble would not last,” Ander- 
sen said to Anspach. . 

There was great joy in the bank, and in the 
Pokono offices over the rise in the bonds, when it 
continued day after day. Every one wore a mien 
of serene confidence. Bill went about with an air 
of abstraction, and told his friends that the Pokono 
enterprise was so nearly completed that the public 
was buying up the bonds. 

A week rolled by. A week is often a lifetime 
in Wall Street, and on this occasion it was a life- 
time for Bill Anspach. Bill found that the public 
would not take part with him in buying Pokono. 
His brokers accumulated a great pile of bonds for 
him, and another visit had to be paid by the con- 
spirators to the vault, for the treasures to borrow 
more' money with. So it continued from week to 
week. 

There were twenty millions of Pokono bonds on 
the market and as Bill bought them up, the pile of 
good securities in General Andersen’s and John 
Anspach’s vault diminished. 

Did Bill stop and think whither events were tend- 
ing ? He did not. It was impossible to stop ; to 
stop was to break down. He worried a great deal 
and lay awake all night. But he was in for it, and 
Bill Anspach, as his father had said, had the deter- 


224 NOT OF JIFF FA THEFTS FACE. 

mination of the devil. He kept on buying Pokono 
as long as his father’s treasure lasted. A change 
might come in the temper of the market, and he 
said to himself, with a grim smile, that he might as 
well be hung for stealing a sheep as a lamb. 

. Mortimor, when he found that his brother-in-law 
was carrying affairs with such a high hand, became 
alarmed and sold his Pokono bonds. Then he 
tried to think that he had cut loose from the trouble 
and was safe. In which opinion he was as correct 
as the ostrich is, who buries his head in the sand 
and imagines that he is hidden. 

The time at length came when the treasures in 
the vault were all gone. The conspirators could 
borrow no more money, and Pokono began to drop 
in price again. 

There was nothing for Bill to do now but to sit 
down and wait. He could buy no more bonds 
without money, and there were no good securities 
left to borrow money with. Nobody was fool 
enough to loan money on such worthless trash, as 
Pokono. 

He and Mortimor had piled the declining Pokono 
securities day after day in the vault. The substi- 
tution of the new for the old was not a disadvan- 
tageous one in point of bulk. The Pokono bonds 
filled the vault, but the loss in value was enormous. 

Still the decline continued ; the public would 
not buy. John Anspach was frightened. In con- 
sultation, he told Andersen, in the presence of Bill, 
that they had been right in not putting any more 


THE RUIN OF POKONO. 


22 $ 


money in Pokono and Sweetwater in such times 
as they were passing through. Little did he dream 
that all he had in the world, and a vast sum beyond 
it for which he was responsible, was invested and 
lost in the ruined enterprise. 

Bill was, apparently, as cool as a cucumber. If 
Pokono failed, they were all ruined ; he realized it, 
but he slept better and tore his hair less in private, 
as ruin seemed more imminent. When Mbrtimor 
asked him disagreeable questions on the way up- 
town, he said ; “ Hold your tongue ; if you talk to 
any one, you are a ruined man. If you keep quiet, 
everything will come right in a little while.” 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

NOT A STRANGER. 

G eneral ANDERSEN was on his way down 
Fifth Avenue one evening, and there, in the 
full blaze of a jeweler’s show window, blocking the 
way and staring him full in the face, stood Harry 
Erskine. 

It was the first time Erskine had been in New 
York, since ht met Andersen at the stock exchange. 
A glance of hatred shot out from his face as Ander- 
sen avoided him without a sign of recognition. 

Erskine turned and followed the erect figure at a 
distance till he saw Andersen stalk down Fifty- 
sixth Street and enter the Hardenberg’s. Then he 
crossed the street and sat down on the steps oppo- 
site. 

“I wonder whether Andersen lives there with 
Jennie. I will see her this time, if I have to stay a 
month,” he said to himself. There he sat and 
dreamed half an hour away, watching the house. 

Just as he was getting up to go, Andersen came 
out. Erskine sat down again until he had gone. 
He did not care to follow him ; he wanted to see 
Jennie. He must live in that house; and Jen- 
nie is there,” he thought. Then he wondered 
why he had never looked in the New York Direc- 
tory for the Andersens’ address. 

226 


NOT A STRANGER, 


227 


‘‘If they live there, I’ll see Jennie this minute,” 
he suddenly said. “ It is a good time while the 
old man is out,” and crossing the street rapidly, 
Erskine rang the bell with two hard pulls. 

“ Is Miss Jennie Andersen in?” he asked the 
servant. 

The footman caught the word “ Andersen,” and 
replied that General Andersen had just gone out, 
but would return soon. 

“ I don’t want Andersen,” Erskine growled con- 
temptuously, “ I want to see Miss Jennie Andersen,” 

Mrs. Hardenberg, who was always on the alert 
during Andersen’s visiting hours, heard the noise 
at the door and came downstairs, half fearing that 
something had gone wrong with the General. 

“ This man asked for General Andersen,” the 
footman said. “ I told him he would be back soon. 
Now, he says he wants to see Miss Jennie.” 

Erskine began to contradict again, but Mrs. 
Hardenberg interrupted him by saying : 

“ Miss Jennie Andersen lives with her father at 
the Albemarle Hotel. Who are you ? ” 

“ I’am Mr. Erskine, of Virginia,” replied Harry, 
and he was off. 

He had not gone half a block, when he recog- 
nized Andersen in the darkness returning. 

“ I will go right up to the Albemarle Hotel and 
see Jennie while her father is away,” he thought, 
as he darted into the druggist's on the corner and 
found the number in the Directory. 

Erskine's efforts to see Jennie would have been in 


228 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


vain, had he sent his card up to her at the Albe- 
marle, and waited to be summoned. But ignorant 
of the ways of the world, when the clerk dis- 
patched a messenger with his name, he followed 
him up the wide staircase. 

Nursing his impudence by glaring contemptu- 
ously at the frescoed ceiling and showy furniture, 
Erskine burst in on Jennie as she rose from beside 
Bill Anspach, with the card she had just received 
from the messenger, held wonderingly in her hand. 

The Andersens’ parlor was the most exclusive 
spot in the great hotel. Proprietor and servants 
all stood in great awe of it. When the messenger 
saw Miss Andersen’s wondering eyes staring at 
something behind him, and turned, to find Erskine 
there, he raised his hand with a gesture of despair, 
frightened by the vision of his instant dismissal 
from service, for permitting such a breach of good 
manners by a visitor. 

“ How de do, Jennie,” began Erskine, his voice 
rising towards the end of the sentence, under Bill 
Anspach’s insolent stare. 

“Mr. Erskine,” Jennie answered, and remained 
standing. Bill turned to the window, and yawning, 
looked out at the lighted shop windows across the 
way. 

Opposite J ennie Andersen was a large mirror. In 
it she beheld herself, as she stood there with the 
color in her beautiful face deepened to the shade 
of the red roses at her waist, her tall form drawn 
up, and her white hand with a diamond glistening 


NOT A STRANGEjR. 


229 


on it, holding Erskine’s card. Close beside this 
lovely figure stood Erskine — a short man, with a 
bad, passionate face, in a thread-bare coat and foul 
linen. This was the fellow who put his arm round 
her waist in the kitchen in Virginia, when they 
were alone. 

It was all over in an instant, before the servant 
could leave the room. Erskine made a step for- 
ward and lifted his hand to offer it. Jennie swept 
past him out of the door, without a word or look. 
Then the servant touched Erskine’s arm, and 
motioned towards the entry. Bill Anspach did not 
even take the trouble to look round. 

, Erskine shook off the servant’s touch, as he 
felt mechanically in his pocket for a pistol. Luckily 
there was not one there. How he passed through 
the door and down the stairs, he could not remem- 
ber when he reached the street. That night, as he 
pulled down the scanty covering on his dirty bed 
in a Bowery hotel, he was cursing Jennie Andersen, 
and he fell asleep devising a plan to expose her 
disgraceful birth in New York. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE CONSPIRATORS. 

HEN Harry Erskine awoke next morning, he 



VV was determined in his resolve to revenge 
himself. He had come to New York to have a lark 
for a week, but all plans of dissipation, were sur- 
rendered to the desire to work the disgrace and 
ruin of Jennie Andersen by exposing her birth. 
How could he tell the world his tale ? He knew 
no one. If he went to the house top and pro- 
claimed that Jennie Andersen was a negre.ss, who 
would listen to him ? The police would lock him 
up for a lunatic. 

He sauntered along down-town. Down, down, 
he thought the big city had no end. At last he 
came to -the Astor House, and looking across the 
way, there was the great sign of the New York 
Advertiser. 

He thought of wonderful stories he had read in 
the newspapers about the private lives of people 
who were in domestic trouble, or who had com- 
mitted crime. Why would not the Advertiser 
publish his tale of Jennie Andersen’s early life? 
Acting on this idea, he crossed the wide street, 
walked into the office and asked for the editor. 


250 


THE CONSPIRATORS. 


231 


What editor ? we have twenty. Go upstairs 
on the tenth floor if you want to find the Editorial 
Department,” replied an office clerk with great 
stress on the word “ department.” 

Erskine stumbled into the elevator, and getting 
out when it stopped, found himself in a long room 
filled with desks, at which dozens of men in their 
shirt-sleeves were smoking and writing. 

He addressed the first person he came to, “ I 
want the Advertiser to publish a story about General 
Andersen of New York, and his daughter, who is an 
octoroon from Virginia,” he said. 

“You don’t mean General Andersen, the great 
banker ? ” replied the man. 

“ I do mean him,” answered Erskine. And then 
he began to relate the history of poor Jennie’s 
birth. 

“ Stop a second,” interrupted his hearer, and 
going away for a moment he came back accompa- 
nied by an elderly man, with keen eyes behind gold 
spectacles, who took a seat without a word, and 
looking Erskine over searchingly, heard hi§ story 
from beginning to end. 

“ Where are you stopping in the city? ” asked the 
spectacled man. 

Harry gave his address in the Bowery. 

“ Hum. Any friends here ? ” 

“ No,” replied Harry. 

“ Hum,” said the spectacled man again. “My 
friend, we never attack the unfortunate in our 
columns. Good-morning.” 


232 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

Erskine slunk away. He would not have felt 
so crestfallen had he heard what the chief editor 
said to his assistant. 

“ Mr. Ely, make a note of the locality and of all 
these names. We will send Mr. Thomas down to 
Virginia at once, to get the facts and write up this 
story. I am afraid to take information against such 
a man as General Andersen, from a fellow without 
any friends who stops at a Bowery hotel. But if 
there is anything in what he says, it will be very 
valuable. It will either make a great sensation for 
the paper, or we may use it as a threat in some 
emergency to control Amory of the Enquirer^ for 
General Andersen and the Enquirer's largest stock- 
holders are intir»ate friends.” 

A glass of beer and a sandwich at the Astor 
House renewed Erskine’s courage. While he 
wiped his lips with the back of his hand he was 
saying to himself : “ They would not publish my 

story because I have no friends. If I only were 
known to some one — ” Then it occurred to him 
that he was known to some one — the lady he saw 
the night before in Fifty-sixth Street ; she must 
have mentioned his visit to Andersen, he thought. 
But perhaps Andersen had denied all knowledge of 
him. — Yet, still the incident of his visit was a kind 
of identification, and why not try to start his story 
by telling it to the lady ? 

Now Erskine was on his way to the Harden- 
bergs. Passing a stationer’s store, he bought 


THE CONSPIRATORS, 233 

some cards, and inscribed his name on one with a 
flourish : 

“HARRY ERSKINE, 

“ Of Virginia E 

Presenting this card, he asked, the servant at the 
door whether he could see the lady he had seen 
the night before. “You mean Mrs. Hardenberg, I 
suppose,” replied the footman as he took the card, 
and closed the inner door, leaving Harry in the 
vestibule. 

But Erskine did not have to wait long. The man 
was back again almost immediately with Mrs. 
Hardenberg. 

“Walk into the drawing-room, sir,” she said, with 
her blandest manner. She felt sure the Virgin- 
ian had something to tell her about the Andersens. 

In the room there was an awkward pause ; 
Erskine was not abashed, but he did not know 
how to begin. Mrs. Hardenberg helped him along 
by saying. “You inquired for General Andersen 
and his daughter, last night ? ” 

“No, I asked for Miss Jennie,” answered Er- 
skine. 

“ I remembered your name after you had gone 
and mentioned it to General Andersen, but he said 
he did not know you,” replied Mrs. Hardenberg in 
a soft, inquiring tone. 

Now, Harry Erskine, in a burst of rage, was 
himself. 

“He does not know me!” he cried, with 
clenched hands and distorted face. “ He lies, 


234 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

He is my cousin. He knew me well enough when 
he lived for years in a hovel with a black woman. 
Curse him ! He is my cousin. We never let him 
enter our house by the front door, when he came to 
work to keep hirpself from starving, with his black 
woman and Jennie, her child. He always ate in 
the kitchen with the black servants. Jennie worked 
there and ate there, too. My grandmother whipped 
her well, many a time. 

“ He does not know me, and Jennie does not know 
me, I suppose. I have walked with her many a 
day to the black school, where she was taught with 
all the other black children by Miss Gillingham, the 
white teacher. 

The Andersens don’t know me ! They have 
eaten our cold victuals and blacked my boots, and 
been spat upon at our back door, and they would be 
living in this way in Virginia still, if the people 
who dug up Andersen’s old grave-yard had not 
found gold for him.” 

“ Do you mean to tell me,” cried Mrs. Harden- 
berg, when she could break in on his passionate 
speech, “that Miss Jennie Andersen, who is engaged 
to marry my friend and relation Mr, William An- 
spach, is a black woman ? ” 

“Yes I do,” replied Harry. “ Her mother was 
a quadroon, born a slave in Virginia. We call 
such people black.” 

As Harry went on, flattered by the interest that 
Mrs. Hardenberg showed, his temper cooled. Not 
an incident of the Andersens’ poor lives was omitted. 


THE CONSPIRATORS. 


235 


He gave a description of black Lucy, Jennie’s 
mother, of the negro school and of Miss Gilling- 
ham. He finished with the story of the search for 
General Thomsen’s sword and uniform, and the 
finding of the treasure in the old grave-yard. 

The remarkable tale bore the stamp of truth. 
Even the finding of the gold, improbable as it 
seemed, did not shake Mrs. Hardenberg’s belief. 
What a tale, the negro hovel, and then the grave- 
yard treasure ! — truly luck had smiled on the An- 
dersens more miraculously in Virginia, than in 
anything that had occurred to make them million- 
aires in New York. 

When Erskine paused, Mrs. Hardenberg asked 
why he came again to inquire at her house about 
the Andersens, when she had told him the night 
before that they lived at the Albemarle Hotel. 

“ I did not come to ask about them, I came to 
see you,” he answered. And then he told her how 
Jennie had turned her back on him in the drawing- 
room. 

“ I want to let you, and all New York know that 
Jennie Andersen is black,” he cried passionately. 

Mrs. Hardenberg lifted her hands and eye- 
brows towards the ceiling with an expression of 
horror. 

“ Well, Mr. Erskine, this is certainly a very ex- 
traordinary story,” she said. “ I am obliged to you 
for putting me on my guard against Miss Ander- 
sen. I have an engagement now. If you will come 
to me to-morrow afternoon at three o’clock I will 


236 NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 

talk with you further. But let what you have told 
me be your secret and mine.” 

As Mrs. Hardenberg went slowly upstairs to 
dress, she was thinking how lucky it was that Maud 
had not been at home to hear Erskine’s story. “ She 
must never hear it, it will prejudice her against the 
General ; there is really nothing against Andersen 
himself,” she thought. “ But to think of that 
girl Jennie, who is doing all she can to take the 
General away from us, one of the primroses of 
society — a black woman. I always thought she 
was a bad creature,” she said to herself. 

Mrs. Hardenberg met Harry Erskine at the 
appointed hour next day. Her mind was made up. 
It would be a great advantage to her plot to marry 
Maud to General Andersen, if she could destroy 
the influence of her enemies, the Anspachs, with 
the Andersens, by breaking the engagement be- 
tween Jennie and Bill. 

She would break the engagement by sending 
Erskine to Bill Anspach, with his tale of Jennie’s 
miserable birth and life in Virginia. 

Would the exposure of Jennie’s birth sever the 
tie with Bill ? Bill Anspach wed a negress ! — 
he, the pink of the down-town swells, the heavy 
man of the clubs, admired by the women, and 
feared by the men ! marry a woman born a black 
outcast ! It was only necessary to breathe the tale 
to him to bring everything to an end. 

Another thought came to Mrs. Hardenberg. 
Could Jennie’s money save her ? Not when there 


237 




THE CONSPIRATORS. 

were hundreds of other rich girls. New York 
was full of them. If Jennie were the only one, she 
would not be so sure of Bill. 

But was the story of this man Erskine true ; 
and how could she prove it to be true without ex- 
posing her connection with the plot ? for no soul 
must ever know that her hand was behind Erskine. 

“ What proof have you, Mr. Erskine,” she sud- 
denly asked, “ that there is no mistake about the 
identity of Miss An'dersen ? Are you sure that she 
is the same person you knew in Virginia ? ” 

“ The same person,” replied Erskine impatiently. 
‘ Don’t I know the girl ? Isn’t Andersen my cousin ? 
Don’t they know me ? Why, I can show you a 
picture of Jennie in the schoolroom at home with 
her colored mates beside her.” 

“Show ‘it to me,” answered Mrs. Hardenberg 
triumphantly. 

“ I’ll send for it to Virginia to-night,” Harry re- 
plied. 

Three days afterwards he came back with a 
dirty, faded photograph of the interior of Miss 
Gillingham’s negro school and there among the 
pupils Mrs. Hardenberg, with a shudder of gratifi- 
cation, recognized Jennie Andersen. 

“ Mr. Erskine,” she said solemnly, “ I think it is 
your duty to inform the gentleman who is engaged 
to marry Miss Andersen, what she is. Mr. William 
Anspach’s sister is my daughter-in-law, and I will 
do anything I can to save him from disgrace. But 
remember, it must never be known that I aided 


238 NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 

you, and there must be no publicity given to the 
story— no one but Mr. Anspach shall hear it.” 

“If Anspach is the proud fellow I saw with Jen- 
nie Andersen at the hotel,” replied Harry, “ it will 
give me great pleasure to cram the whole story 
down his throat, and then show him the picture.” 

Mrs. Hardenberg drew close to Erskine ; “ Now, 
1 want you to listen carefully and follow my direc- 
tions. Tell me again, why do you want to make 
this exposure of Jennie Andersen ? ” 

“ For revenge,” hissed Erskine. “ That girl and 
her father have treated me shamefully. Even 
when she was in Virginia she always thought her- 
self above her place. I want to bring her down.” 

“ You can have your revenge and make ^ome 
money, too,” Mrs. Hardenberg answered softly. 
“ Swear never to reveal my name in the matter and 
to follow my directions, in exposing Jennie Ander- 
sen’s birth, and I will give you $500.” 

Five hundred dollars — phew ! — Harry Erskine 
had never had a tenth of that sum at one time, in 
all his life. He looked at Mrs. Hardenberg as if he 
could not believe his senses. 

There was the low hum of confidential conversa- 
tion between them for half an hour, and when 
Erskine went away he carried a roll of bank notes 
in his pocket. 

Five hundred dollars was a small amount for 
Mrs. Hardenberg just then. Had not Grosvenor 
Hardenberg made a great deal of money lately 
speculating on the bear side in Pokono bonds, led 


THE CONSPIRATORS. 


239 


thereto by his wife’s advice, which advice was 
founded on the lugubrious stories of the financial 
straits of the Pokono and Sweetwater enterprise, 
that General Andersen told her and Maud in the 
evening ? 

The next morning Mrs. Hardenberg and Maud 
met Jennie Andersen shopping at Arnold’s. Mrs, 
Hardenberg forced an unwilling kiss from her, and 
thought, as she did so, “ You are black, my queen. 
When Bill Anspach knows it, you will never get a 
kiss from him.” 

Mrs. Hardenberg had thought what a pity it was, 
that sHe could not make public her discovery of 
Jennie’s disgraceful birth, as a neat piece of revenge 
against Bill Anspach, for his trick in tossing her 
overboard in Tuxedo Lake. As it was, she was 
rendering him a benefit by privately informing him 
that Jennie was a negress, in time to prevent the 
marriage, and the secret must remain forever hid- 
den from the world, for General Andersen’s sake. 
To make Jennie’s history public would ruin Mrs. 
Hardenberg with General Andersen and the An- 
spachs. 

The hate and malice of the woman of the world, 
must be sacrificed to the plans of the scheming 
mother. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

A BRUTE MEETS A THIEF. 

B ill ANSPACH was alone in his private room 
down-town, at five o’clock in the afternoon. 
He went home late and alone every day now. 

Mortimor was never with him. They held aloof 
from each other. 

Everything had gone wrong. Pokono bonds had 
fallen lower and lower. There was the big vault 
full of trash, waste paper ; his father’s and Ander- 
sen’s treasures all gone, and nothing wanting but 
discovery, to bring on a panic and ruin them all. 

It was all Bill’s work, from the scheme of the 
railroad to the enormous theft in the vault. There 
was no soul to go to for help — not even Mortimor, 
who turned white with fear whenever he saw Bill. 

But another trouble had come to Bill the night 
before — he and Jennie were to be married in two 
months. 

A few days earlier his mother had given him one 
of her periodical lectures on the folly of his not being 
married at once, which she followed up with a note 
to Jennie on the same subject. 

Wilhelmina had written many notes of this kind to 
Jennie, who always laughed at them. But why did 
she pause gravely with this one in her hand, and 


240 


A BRUTE MEETS A THIEF. 241 

admit to herself that it was time she should be mar- 
ried ? — it was the interview with Harry Erskine at 
the Albemarle Hotel, and the recollection of Miss 
Gillingham’s warning against him. 

It would be difficult for Erskine to injure Jen- 
nie as a married woman. Who would believe him 
if he said that the queenly Mr.s. Bill Arispach was 
a negress ? But unmarried — a breath of suspicion 
would ruin her as Jennie Andersen. 

When Bill came in the evening, Jennie put her 
arms round his neck and told him she had another 
letter from his mother. Before they parted the 
wedding-day was fixed for April 3. 

As Bill sat alone in' the back room down-town 
that afternoon, with head bowed in his hands, and 
reviewed all his troubles, his approaching marriage 
seemed the worst of them. He knew that if dis- 
covery of his enormous thefts came, the Andersens 
would be as completely ruined as the Anspachs. 
To marry Jennie under these circumstances was 
adding her losses to his — doubling his misfortunes 
in fact. 

He viewed the matter entirely from his own 
stand-point. Jennie’s share of the disgrace of his 
crime, when they were married, never entered his 
head. It only seemed to him such a ghastly thing 
to marry a girl, who all the world thought had 
plenty of money, knowing as he did that she had 
not a cent. 

He did not bother himself much about his crime 
of theft, because he did not think it became a 


242 NOT OF HER FA THER 'S RA CE. 

crime until he was found out. Loss of his money 
was his only crime as yet. But his theft of Jennie’s 
money was her crime, and he thought it a hideous 
piece of folly for him to marry such a criminal as 
she was. 

But what was the use in fretting about it ; he 
could not break his engagement. Such a step 
would bring on a quarrel between the houses of 
Anspach and Andersen ; and an attempt by Gen- 
eral Andersen to withdraw his money from the 
bank, meant discovery and ruin. Then the mar- 
riage was two months off, a generation for a man 
in Wall Street. By that time Pokono and Sweet- 
water might recover, and be on its legs again. 

Bill started up, washed his hands, brushed his 
hair, and pushed against the screen door to go 
home. It would not yield at first. When he 
opened it, a man stood before him trying to get in. 
It was Harry Erskine. 

“ Good-eyening, Mr. Anspach,” he said ; “ you 
don’t know me, I see. I met you some time ago 
at the Albemarle Hotel with Miss Andersen. My 
name is Erskine— Harry Erskine of Virginia.” 

“ Well, what do you want ? ” answered Bill, try- 
ing to push past him, and get rid of the annoyance 
of a common fellow. 

“ I only want to have a moment’s conversation 
with you, Mr. Anspach,” Harry replied. “ I want 
to tell you something you will thank me for.” 

Bill went back into the room with a gesture of 
impatience^ followed by Erskine, There he re- 


A BRUTE MEETS A THIEF. 


243 


mained standing, eyeing Erskine suspiciously, who 
sat down. 

“ I know Miss Andersen quite well,” began Er- 
skine in a confidential tone, “ and — ” 

“ Well, what of that ? ” Bill broke in. 

“ Did she never mention my name to you ? ” Er- 
skine asked, with a dark look. 

“ No,” replied Bill complacently, wdio never had 
a refined lover’s delicate feelings or fears about his 
sweetheart, and did not care whether this fellow had 
known Jennie Andersen intimately or not. 

Then Erskine got up, and standing before Bill, 
said in a low tone : “ Mr. Anspach, I came here to 
do you a great service, I came here to tell you that 
the woman you are engaged to marry is a black 
woman.” 

Bill looked at him a second without understand- 
ing him. 

“ A black woman, what do you mean ? ” he re- 
peated slowly. 

‘‘ I mean that Miss Andersen is what you people 
in the North call a colored person. General An- 
dersen is her father. Her mother was an un- 
married quadroon,” replied Erskine. 

Most men in Bill Anspach’s situation would 
have proceeded in a great rage to eject the in- 
former from the door as a blackmailer. Bill said 
“ Ah ” coolly, and sat down. 

Who sent you here with this foolish story,” he 
asked, after a little reflection. 

I came of my own will/’ answered Erskine, 


244 NOT OF HER' FATHER'S RACE. 

with a frank look to cover the lie. “ Now, Mr. 
Anspach, you never saw me before but once, the 
evening I met you at General Andersen’s, with Miss 
Jennie, and I don’t expect you to believe the 
story of a stranger without evidence. I have 
brought a picture with me that will show you 
Miss Jennie Andersen— the lady you are to 
marry — as she was when she went to school in 
Virginia.” 

Erskine here produced the soiled photograph 
from his pocket, and, retaining it firmly in his grasp, 
he turned it to the light. . There Bill saw a pictur- 
esque scene of the interior of a log school-house, 
with two bench rows of negro children reciting to 
the white teacher at her desk. The class sat in 
every imaginable position. There they were, big 
and little, straight-haired and woolly-headed, and 
in the center of the front bench, with her hand on 
the knee of her grinning neighbor — black Abraham 
Lincoln Jones — was a slim girl, apparently white, 
easily identified as Miss Jennie Andersen, the 
proud beauty of New York, the affianced wife of 
the distinguished financier. Bill Anspach. 

Little did Miss Gillingham think when she col- 
lected a penny each from the negro scholars, and 
added a dollar herself, to pay a strolling photog- 
rapher for his work, what a woeful weapon the 
picture would be against the happiness of the child 
she loved. 

‘‘ Who sent you here with this picture ? ” asked 
Bill, as he gazed at the photograph. 


A BRUTE MEETS A THIEF. 245 

“ I told you just now that I came of my own 
accord,” Erskine answered doggedly. 

Bill looked at him contemptuously from head to 
foot without a word. Then he buttoned up his 
coat and moved towards the door as if to go. 

“ What are you going to do about it, Mr. An- 
spach ? ” Erskine asked anxiously. 

“ Nothing,” replied Bill. 

Erskine, with a fierce look, “ Suppose the story 
should get in the newspapers, Mr. Anspach ? ” 

“ Now look here, my friend,” replied Bill earnestly, 
coming back and sitting down, “ there is nothing to 
be made from me ; I will not pay you a dollar.” 

Erskine struck a position, throwing out his 
hands vigorously. “ I assure you, sir, I do not want 
a cent.” 

“ What do you want then ? ” asked Bill coldly. 

‘‘ I want you to break off your engagement with 
Jennie Andersen. I expose her to you for revenge. 
She has treated me badly,” cried Erskine passion- 
ately. 

‘‘Well, you need not get in such a passion about 
it,” replied Bill. “ If it is any satisfaction to you to 
hear it, I am perfectly willing to say that if you 
keep quiet about this matter, I will not marry the 
girl ; but if you talk, my honor will compel me to 
prove that your story is a lie, and I will put you in 
jail for an attempt at blackmail.” 

“ But your honor is not so strong as the proof of 
this picture,” sneered Erskine. 

“ I don’t think that is a picture of Miss Ander- 


246 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

sen,” answered Bill, pointing to the photograph in 
Erskine’s hand ; “and I have a pretty strong pall in 
New York, my friend. If you get before a magis- 
trate with me it will go hard with you, no matter 
what your photograph shows. Remember this, 
though. There are reasons why I don’t want to 
marry the girl, reasons that have nothing to do with 
your story or your picture, and if you are a sensi- 
ble man and hold your tongue your wishes will be 
gratified. Let me see the picture,” he said, stretch- 
ing out his hand carelessly. 

Erskine took no notice of the request, except to 
put the photograph back in his overcoat pocket. 

Bill got up to go. “ Do we understand each 
other, then ? Are you to keep quiet ?” 

“Yes, I am to keep quiet if you give up the 
girl,” answered Erskine. 

“ Are you going back to Virginia ? ” Bill asked. 

“ Not yet,” replied Erskine, as he handed Bill a 
card with his name and address in the Bowery. 
“ If you have anything to say, you will find me 
there.” And they parted. 

Bill drew a long breath. “ I think I have 
bluffed him for the present,” he thought. “ I can- 
not break with the girl now. The next time the 
fellow comes I must pay him something. Mrs. 
Hardenbergis at the bottom of it, curse her.” 

Bill Anspach was a man of nerve, but on the way 
up-town he was all in a tremble. When he reached 
his room he locked the door, threw himself on the 
bed, and went on like a madman, No wonder; if he 


A BRUTE MEETS A THIEF. 247 

broke with Jennie there would be war between the 
families, Andersen would call for his funds, and 
this would expose the robbery. If he paid this 
fellow Erskine to keep quiet, and did not break 
his engagement with Jennie — but he could not 
bear even to think of this. Marry an octoroon and 
a beggar to boot, with the exposure of his crime 
hanging over him, — when disgrace and ruin could 
not be staved off long if Pocono did not recover ! 
Bill Anspach was in a terrible situation. 

Harry Erskine went directly from his interview 
with Bill Anspach to see Mrs. Hardenberg. She 
heard his story with breathless attention. When he 
had finished she said : “ That is just what I ex- 
pected, Mr. Erskine. Now, you must be patient 
and wait to see what he will do.” 

“ I never saw such a man,” Erskine replied with 
a sneer. “ He was not a bit startled by what I told 
him.” 

“ Well,” answered Mrs. Hardenberg, rising, ‘‘ you 
comeback here in a few days and I shall know how 
matters are going on.” 

Harry Erskine was not born of a money-making 
race ; his sole object when he first saw Mrs. Har- 
denberg was to gratify his hatred of the Andersens 
by exposing Jennie. Bad as he was, he had not 
then the worldly wisdom to think of turning his 
secret into money. But Mrs. Hardenberg’s $500, 
and Bill Anspach’s assertion that he would not pay 
anything, opened the villain’s eyes to. the possibili- 
ties of the situation. He saw he could have his 


248 NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 


revenge and fill his pockets at the same time. As 
he rose to go he turned to Mrs. Hardenberg and 
said, You say you are only trying to save your 
friend William Anspach. He does not seem anxious 
to be saved, and I don’t understand how it is that 
you are so intimate with old Andersen all the time. 
But I will ask no questions. Next time I come, 
I must have some fnoney for expenses.” 

“ You shall have it,” replied Mrs. Hardenberg, 
“ if you do just as I tell you to do.” 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

AN APPROACHING CATASTROPHE. 

J OHN ANSPACH’S friend, the Hon. Thomas 
Huckleberry, was in town, just arrived from a 
voyage abroad on a mission for some of his Chi- 
cago friends, to negotiate the sale of a railroad in 
London. 

Mrs. Plardenberg captured Huckleberry on Fifth 
Avenue, and had him to dine at her house with 
Andersen the following week. In the evening 
they went to the opera to hear Patti in “ La Forza 
del Destino.’' 

Mrs. Hardenberg from her box saw Amory and 
Fishbourne in the orchestra together. 

Huckleberry, fresh from scheming with an Eng- 
lish syndicate of railway traders, of which Lord 
Dunderdale was the head, was anxious to air his 
opinions of the democratic society of New York 
before the ladies. For had not the aristocratic Dun- 
derdale taken him home over-night to his country 
seat at Twickenham, accounting for the absence of 
Lady Dunderdale by saying that she was traveling 
on the continent, when in fact the good woman 
was living with her father, an eminent Liverpool 
bottler of porter and ale, in consequence of Dun- 
derdale’s dissipated habits and bankruptcy. 


249 


250 NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 

At the end of the first act, Huckleberry glancing 
from Maud’s pretty face over the array of heads in 
the orchestra, broke forth : “ What a difference 
there is between the people one meets in society 
in New York and in London. In London, every 
gentleman is known, and has long had his position. 
Here you do not know anything about anybody. 
You are such a mixed lot with your four hundred 
first families. No one knows what consideration 
a man is entitled to ; even your millionaires have 
no confidence in their position. Your friend 
must be rich, but he is always raw — the half 
cooked product of some railroad scheme or silver 
mine. 

“ In no part of the world is the social life of the 
upper classes held together by so frail a thread as 
in New York,” Huckleberry went on, beginning to 
talk through his nose as he forgot himself; “they 
are like birds of passage that band themselves 
together in flocks for a little while in search of food 
and shelter, to separate in a few weeks forever. 
New York is the gate-way through which for a 
generation, millions of men have passed to the new 
world every few years, with nothing to lose and 
everything to gain. Here native born brother for- 
gets brother as they affiliate with the mad crowd of 
new arrivals, and join in the race for wealth. Those 
who succeed and rise to the surface, know each 
other only because they are on the surface; they 
value their friends merely as having half a million, 
— one, — two — three millions, just as a milkman 


AN APPROACHING CATASTROPHE. 251 

grades his cows for their average yield of milk. 
He among you who loses his money is immediately 
forgotten. 

“ Do the families of these people know each 
other well ? Rarely ; there are few associations 
on which to found a friendship. The meeting at 
a formal dinner or reception, or at places of public 
amusement, are the only opportunities for social 
intercourse, and at such times New Yorkers are so 
busy vying with each other in vulgar display, that 
there is little chance for intimate acquaintance or 
friendship.” 

Huckleberry only ceased when Patti burst forth 
in song. Mrs. Hardenberg and Maude listened 
with admiration to the disquisition on New York 
society. Andersen nodded, asleep. While Gros- 
venor Hardenberg had gone away to the bar-room. 

Amory and Fishbourne, seated together in the 
orche.stra, fell to talking at the end of the second 
act, about priests in Spain and lawyers in the 
United States, led thereto by the appearance of the 
Spanish Friar, Guardiano, on the stage. Fish- 
bourne spoke of the Spanish priesthdod, and said 
he could not understand how such a clergy exercised 
so great an influence over the people of Spain. 

“ It is the easiest thing to account for in the 
world,” answered Amory ; “ in Spain every one 
leads an aimless existence ; there is no struggle to 
rise in this life, and people have a great deal of 
time to worry themselves about the next. It is the 
priest’s opportunity ; he assumes the charge of 


252 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

their souls for the next world about which they are 
all worried, and hence his influence.” 

“ It is an analogous case,” Amory continued with 
a smile, “ to the influence of you lawyers in the 
United States. You are conceded no such impor- 
tance by the vulgar mind anywhere else on the 
globe, as you are here ; and the reason is that in 
the United States every one is pushing and fighting, 
fair or foul, to beat his neighbor. It is a fight 
everywhere all round, and you lawyers are not only 
in demand for a fight, but you pretend sometimes 
to make yourselves useful in settling one. From 
constantly appealing^to you for help, unthinking 
people learn to believe that lawyers know every- 
thing of the affairs of this world, just as a Spaniard 
learns to believe that the’ priest knows everything 
of a hereafter. But you and I know how mis-, 
taken the people are about lawyers, don’t we, old 
fellow ? ” he said laughing. 

Fishbourne looked grave. “ Newspaper men 
live in glass houses, Amory. You must not throw 
.stones,” he replied. 

Amory had observed the Hardenbergs, and 
noticed that Huckleberry and Andersen had gone 
away and left them alone — “ Come, there are Miss 
Maud and Mrs. Hardenberg,” he said to Fish- 
bourne — “ Let us go up and speak to them.” 

When the two men sat down in the box, the 
thought uppermost in the minds of all was the re- 
cent announcement of the wedding day of Jennie 
Andersen. 


AN APPROACHING CATASTROPHE 253 

Amory was the first to speak of it. 

“ I hear that Miss Andersen is to be married very 
shortly, Mrs. llardenberg,” he began. “ Your son, 
Mortimor, told me to-day that Mr. Anspach in- 
tended to give Mr. William Anspach a house in 
Fifty-second Street.” 

Amory could not resist the opportunity to see how 
Fishbourne would bear being spoken to about the 
lady who was supposed to have refused him, and 
turning to him he said: 

“ Fishbourne ought to know all about it ; he has 
charge of Mr. Anspach’s purchases of real estate.” 

“ I can only say,” answered Fishbourne with 
dignity, that I have searched a title in Fifty-second 
Street for Mr. Anspach. Everybody knows of it ; 
it is the talk of the town. Miss Maud will be the 
next to go, I suppose, and I trust she will make it 
my duty to search the title of a house for her, too.” 

When Mrs. Hardenberg reached home, she had 
made up her mind that when Erskine came to see 
her the next morning, according to appointment, 
she would send him to see Bill Anspach again. 
Fishbourne’s acknowledgment that evening, of the 
purchase of a house by John Anspach for the 
betrothed couple, was not a surprise to her, but it 
roused her to action. It had been plain to her for 
some time that Bill had taken no measures to break 
off his engagement, and that Erskine’s threat to 
Bill to expose poor Jennie’s secret was unheeded. 
She gathered a great deal of what was going on in 
the Anspach 'household from Elsie and Mortimor, 


254 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 

through Maud. She saw but little of the Anspachs 
herself. 

But Mrs. Hardenberg changed her plan during 
the night ; she would send Erskine to see Mrs. 
Anspach, not Bill. This would bring matters to a 
climax without a doubt. 

Had it ever occurred to Mrs. Hardenberg that 
she was running a great risk of exposure in plotting 
with Erskine? Yes, it had, but a woman who plays 
for a stake is always willing to run a great risk. 

She reasoned as follows : She could say that she 
had acquired the secret of Jennie’s birth honestly. 
In giving it to the Anspachs she was doing them a 
service, for which she might claim credit with them 
if she were discovered and quarreled with Ander- 
sen, which God forbid. On the other hand, when 
Jennie Andersen was disgraced with the Anspachs, 
and her engagement with Bill broken, she felt sure 
that Jennie’s father, cut off from the Anspach 
influence, would soon fall into her net with Maud ; 
and then she, the proud mother-inslaw, could snap 
her fingers at any one ; while Erskine satisfied 
with the disgrace of Jennie, and with a good round 
gift of money, would disappear in the wilds of 
Virginia. 

Mrs. Hardenberg regretted that she had taught 
Erskine how money could be made from his secret. 
After the suspicions he had given utterance to, and 
his demand for another payment, she had visions of 
being blackmailed by him, and made to pay in the 
future for her plotting. 


AJ\r APPROACHING CATASTROPHE. 255 

But what was done could not be undone; she 
was in the thick of it, and must push ahead. 

Erskine came. “ Have you heard anything from 
Mr. William Anspach ? ” Mrs. Hardenberg asked. 

‘‘ No,” replied Erskine te.stily, and then he added, 
why wont you give me a letter to one of the 
papers. They might publish the story for me.” 

“ That would be a foolish thing to attempt,” an- 
swered Mrs. Hardenberg, with a tremor in her voice, 
and a cold chill through her body, “it would never 
do, they would laugh at you ; General Andersen is 
a person of great influence.” 

“ Oh, I see,” answered Erskine with a sneer. 
“ You want to save your friend the General. I 
don’t care whom I hurt.” 

“ If you offered a newspaper one hundred thou- 
sand dollars, they would not dare to publish such 
a story about people of the Andersens’ influence,” 
replied Mrs. Hardenberg forcibly. 

“ Why don’t you see Mr. William Anspach’s 
mother, and tell her,” Mrs. Hardenberg said after 
a moment’s silence. 

“ I have often thought of seeing sonie other 
member of the family. I have passed old Anspach’s 
house in Fifty-seventh Street a great many times 
lately. Do you think his wife would be the best 
one to tell ?” Erskine replied. 

Mrs. Hardenberg laid her hand on his arm. 
“ Tell Mrs. Anspach all you have told her son, 
show her the photograph of the negro school, and 
I am sure it will prevent the marriage. If you will 


2 $6 NOT OF HER FATHER^ S RACE. 

do this, and go back to Virginia immediately after- 
wards, I will give you another $500.” 

At once they were engaged in earnest conver- 
sation. When Erskine left Mrs. Hardenberg it 
had been arranged between them that he was to 
go to see Mrs. Anspach the next afternoon. If he 
could not gain an interview with her in any other 
way, he was to send up the photograph with 
Jennie’s name written on it. After the interview he 
was to report the result to Mrs. Hardenberg, and if 
it were favorable he-agreed to go back to Virginia 
in the evening. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

DOWN HILL. 

J ENNIE ANDERSEN was to be married. One 
of her first duties was to write a warm invitation 
to Miss Gillingham to come to the wedding. 

Jennie knew she would not come. As she was 
writing, the teacher’s last words, at the Albemarle 
Hotel came back to her, “ Tell me, dear child, that 
you have told Mr. William Anspach the story of 
your birth.” 

“What nonsense,” Jennie thought. 

Miss Gillingham’s reply to the invitation ended 
by saying : “ I cannot come to the wedding ; it is 
impossible for many reasons. God bless you, dear 
girl.” 

Andersen heard the announcement of the wed- 
ding-day with his usual solemnity and silence. He 
paid but little attention to his daughter’s busy occu- 
pation in getting her trousseau. The bills came in 
by hundreds, and he paid them with his checks 
without a remark. 

Jennie told him that Mr. Anspach talked of giving 
a house to Bill for them to live in. She expected 
her father would protest against this, and would 
insist on buying a house for his daughter himself, 
but she was disappointed. 

The fact was that Andersen’s losses in Pokono 
and Sweetwater had been so great, that he felt 
257 


258 NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


inclined to economize. He had never made the dis- 
play of his wealth that John Anspach always made, 
and he did not feel compelled to make a show be- 
fore the world at his daughter’s wedding. Nay, 
he even did not do what was expected of him under 
the circumstances, for New York custom, where 
fortunes are great on both sides of a match, makes 
it the duty of a bride’s father to provide a house. 

Events had run down hill fast for Andersen and 
the Anspachs. Pokono and Sweetwater stock no 
longer had any value. 

There was a panic in Wall Street, brought about 
by the troubles of Pokono. People were so fright- 
ened about their own affairs, that Bill Anspach’s 
colorless face was not noticed ; there were too 
many pale faces round him. 

The panic was not the worst of it for Bill. Large 
sums of money that he had secretly borrowed, by 
pledging the securities stolen from his father’s 
vault, were called for by the lenders. While John 
Anspach and General Andersen were talking to 
him of their losses in Pokono, Bill’s tired head was 
busy plotting to put off the evil day, that would 
expose to them the loss of all he had stolen — 
the evil day that must show them the vault gutted 
of their treasures, and filled with piles of worthless 
trash — the evil day that must bring to light, not 
only his thefts, but also his latest crime — the notes 
on which he had forged his father’s and Andersen’s 
names, when all hopes of getting money by other 
means had failed him. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

THE FATAL PICTURE. 

M rs. ANSPACH was eating her breakfast in 
bed at two o’clock in the afternoon. She and 
Jennie Andersen had been at a ball the night 
before. 

When Wilhelmina had pushed the breakfast tray 
away from before her, and settled her head back on 
the pillow, she looked out over the floor and thought 
what a fool she had been to dance for three-quarters 
of an hour with dapper little Mr. Simon Heaven- 
rich. Her limbs ached as if she had played foot- 
ball. 

“ I never shall learn how to make use of a maid,” 
she said, changing the subject of her thoughts. 
“Just look how the careless hussy has left my dresses 
scattered all over the room.” 

She had just began to doze, when her maid 
knocked and came in. 

“ They have let a man in the hall, madame, who 
asked for you. I tried to turn him away, and then 
he brought out this picture, which he says belongs 
to Miss Andersen and that you would like very 
much to see it. He would not go away and leave 
it, and as you were awake eating your breakfast, I 
brought it up.” 


259 


26 o 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


“ Pull the curtain aside, Marie,” replied Mrs. 
Anspach. “ What can it be ? ” And holding the 
picture up with the light streaming on it from the 
window, Wilhelmina instantly recognized Jennie 
Andersen among her curly-headed school-mates. 
The scene told its story in an instant. What 
American could look at it without knowing that 
every scholar on the bench, black or white, was 
in greater or lesser degree of negro blood ? Mrs. 
Anspach started up with a scream. 

“ Marie, get my stockings and dress me ; or, no, 
go downstairs and tell the man to wait. Stay with 
him and see that he does wait.” 

Wilhelmina dressed herself in haste. In ten 
minutes she was on the stairs. She descended 
softl)^, and appeared before Erskine, who was talk-* 
ing with the maid in the entry, as suddenly as if 
she had dropped from the clouds. He gave a start 
when he encountered her determined black eyes, 
and began to cringe. 

“ Come in here,” Wilhelmina commanded, lead- 
ing the way into the drawing-room and closing 
the door. “ What do you mean by sending me 
up this photograph ? ” 

“ It is a photograph of Miss Jennie Andersen 
when she went to a negro school in Virginia, 
ma’am,” replied Erskine humbly. “ My name is 
Erskine. I was brought up with Miss Andersen in 
Virginia. I heard down there that she was to marry 
your son, and I thought you probably would pay me 
a thousand dollars for telling you that she was 


THE FATAL PICTURE. 


261 


black, in time to save your son from disgracing 
himself.” 

“ Black, do you say she is black ; and is Gen- 
eral Andersen white, and is he her father? ” asked 
Wilhelmina, with agitation. 

“ Yes, ma’am, she is black and Andersen is white ; 
he is her father,” answered Erskine. “ I knew Jen- 
nie Andersen’s mother when I was a boy ; she 
died long ago. She was a quadroon, and of course 
she was not married to Jennie’s father.” 

“ Are you a quadroon ? ” asked Mrs. Anspach 
bluntly. 

“ No, I am a gentleman,” Erskine replied fiercely. 
“ Go ask the young lady herself, if what I say about 
her is not true ; she will not dare to deny it. The 
Albemarle Hotel, where she lives, is not far. I will 
wait here and answer your questions after you have 
seen her.” 

“ I will take you at your word,’^ answered Wilhel- 
mina excitedly. “ Wait in the back room till 
I return,” and clutching the picture tightly in 
her hand, she slammed the front door behind 
her. 

On Fifth Avenue, Wilhelmina found a cab ; she 
gave the driver a five dollar bill, and forgot the 
change when she descended opposite the Albemarle 
Hotel. Breathless with haste she entered the 
Andersen’s drawing-room. 

A maid was putting Jennie’s desk in order. 
“ Miss Andersen has just gone out in the carriage,” 
she said, with astonishment in her face at Mrs, 


262 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


Anspach’s agitated demeanor. “ She will not re- 
turn for an hour.” 

“ I will wait,” replied Wilhelmina. No, I wont, 
I will come here again,” and she hurried back home 
as she had come. When she entered the drawing- 
room, Harry Erskine had gone. She rang for the 
servants. No one had seen him go. 

“ It is all a lie,” she thought, with a sigh of relief. 
“ I am glad I did not see Jennie.” Then she looked 
at the picture again. “ It cannot be a lie, that girl 
is Jennie Andersen. But why did that man go 
away ? I ought to have taken his name and 
address.” Then she pondered a minute. ‘‘ Per- 
haps it is only a plot of somebody to break up the 
match,” she said. 

Wilhelmina went to her room to dress herself. 
Her head was clear, and she was recovering her 
composure. She made up her mind that the proper 
thing to do was to send some one at once to Vir- 
ginia, to investigate the history of the Andersens. 
There was plenty of time before the marriage was 
to take place. “ If there is a plot of some enemy 
to break the match, and this man’s story, is untrue, 
Jennie Andersen would be indignant if I asked her 
about it, and she would surely break with Bill,” she 
thought. 

Did Wilhelmina blame herself for not having 
learned anything of the early history of the Ander- 
sens before the engagement was made ? No, like 
every one else, she had taken them for just what they 
seemed to be worth to her at the moment, without 


THE FATAL PICTURE. 


263 


inquiry. Would she grieve over Jennie’s disgrace 
should the story prove true ? No, indeed, she was 
only thinking of her son Bill’s social ruin, if he 
married an octoroon. If the story proved true, 
roasting alive at the stake was too good for Jennie 
Andersen, whether she was ignorant of her origin 
or not. 

Wilhelmina’s thoughts were interrupted by a 
knock. The maid came to tell her that Mr. Anspach 
had just come home, and wanted her in the draw- 
ing-room. 

She descended in haste. Her husband’s judg- 
ment would settle the question for her now. 

In the back room on the lounge lay John Anspach. 
He sat up as she came in. The light from the 
window fell on his face ; he was ghastly pale. 

“ Wife,” he said, before she could speak, “ I am a 
ruined man, a beggar ! The bank has failed. An- 
dersen is ruined.” 

“Where is Bill ? He can help you,” cried Wil- 
helmina, holding out her hands. ^ 

“ My son Bill,” Anspach answered mechanically, 
“your son Bill, sailed for Venezuela last night; 
they have no extradition treaty there and then he 
faltered, as he leaned his head against the mantel, 
“ He did it all. He is a forger and a thief. He 
made Mortimor a thief, too.” 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

THE OLD LOVE. 

HEN Harry Erskine, looking out of the 



vv Anspachs’ drawing-room window, saw Mrs. 
Anspach well on her way to see Jennie Andersen, 
he quietly opened the front door and slipped out. 

He went at once to . see Mrs. Hardenberg. 
Maud came in just as the footman was admitting 
him. She met her mother on the stairs and told 
her that the same horrid looking fellow who was 
there last week wanted to see her in the drawing- 
room. “ What do you see such a person about ? ” 
she asked. 

“ My dear, it is one of my charities. You must 
not interrupt us,” her mother replied. 

“Well,” said Mrs. Hardenberg to Erskine, as 
she closed the drawing-room door, “did you see 
Mrs. Anspach ? ” 

Erskine told her all that had happened. 

Mrs. Hardenberg had been lucky that day. Of 
late she had felt alarmed at the delay in her plot 
against poor Jennie, caused by the unexpected in- 
difference of Bill Anspach to Erskine’s story. 

Erskine, too, gave her great uneasiness. She 
was frightened to death by his proposal that he 
should go to the newspapers with his tale. For, 


264 


THE OLD LOVE. 


2^5 

although she felt sure that they would not dare 
to publish such a scandal about the daughter of 
Banker Andersen, Erskine’s desire to make the 
attempt to publish it, showed how reckless he was 
with his secret. She saw that there was danger 
from him every day, every hour, that he remained 
in New York. She must be rid of him immediately 
after he had seen Mrs. Anspach. 

With all these thoughts in her mind, Mrs. Har- 
denberg had been walking that afternoon down 
Fifth Avenue opposite the Albemarle Hotel, think- 
ing that it was about the hour of Erskine’s visit 
to Mrs. Anspach, when lo ! right before her 
eyes, Mrs. Anspach jumped hastily out of a cab, 
with Erskine’s photograph of the negro school 
clutched in her hand, and looking neither to the 
right nor left, hurried into- the hotel elevator. 

The sight sent a thrill of wicked joy through 
Mrs. Hardenberg — Wilhelmina had heard Erskine’s 
story ; she was on the way to see Jennie Andersen ; 
there was the tell-tale picture in her hand — Mrs. 
Hardenberg recognized it. 

Hurrying home, she had just composed herself, 
when Erskine arrived to tell her of his successful 
visit to Mrs. Anspach. 

Then Mrs. Hardenberg was sure that all had 
gone well. Nothing remained to be done, but 
to get rid of Erskine, and let events take their 
course. 

“ This will settle the matter,” she said to Erskine 
impressively when he had finished his story ; “ and 


266 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


I want you to go right back to Virginia to-night. 
Here is your money.” 

They shook hands and parted. How glad Mrs. 
Hardenberg was that it was all over with Erskine. 

Erskine went away feeling intensely gratified. 
His triumph over Jennie, the roll of bills in his 
pocket, — what more could he have hoped for ? 

Yes, there was more — to see Jennie herself and 
tell her he had told her secret to Bill Anspach’s 
mother ; and then what a triumph it would be, if he 
could add, that he had given the entire story of her 
birth and early life to the newspapers. 

Of course, all this would be a violation of Er- 
skine’s agreement with Mrs. Hardenberg. What 
did he care for that, he had the money. 

But he had tried the newspapers before, and they 
would not listen to him. Why should they listen 
to him now ? He must give the newspapers up, he 
thought. Well, then at least he could see Jennie, 
and tell her he had betrayed her secret to her lover’s 
mother. 

As Erskine turned into Broadway, revolving the 
matter in his mind, he heard the newsboys crying 
“ Extra ! Panic in Wall Street ! Failure of An- 
spach’s Bank ! Failure of General Andersen ! 
Flight of William Anspach, the financier, a thief 
and forger ! ” 

Erskine could not believe his senses. He bought 
a newspaper and read the story of the failures, 
brought about that afternoon by the discovery of 
the crimes of Bill Anspach, who was supposed to 


THE OLD LOVE. 267 

have fled to South America in a vessel that sailed 
the night before-. 

“Well, the Andersens are ruined ; Jennie’s lover 
is an outcast, and I’ve had no hand in it, curse my 
luck,” he said ; “but I can have some satisfaction 
from what I know, yet. First, I will go to the 
newspapers and tell them my story about the An- 
dersens. Of course, as the Andersens are down 
in the gutter now, the reporters will publish any- 
thing I choose to say about Jennie’s black blood. 
Next, I will go to the Albemarle Hotel, and tell 
Jennie I have exposed her ; wont that be a good 
day’s work ? ” and Erskine took the elevated rail- 
road to go to a newspaper office. 

When Jennie got out of the carriage at the door 
of the Albemarle Hotel, an hour after Mrs. An- 
spach’s attempt to see her with the fatal picture, a 
newsboy stood on the sidewalk crying, “Ander- 
sen’s and Anspach’s failure ! Flight of William 
Anspach ! ” 

The names struck her ear. She listened, and 
then in a dream she bought the paper and read the 
account. 

Could this be her betrothed husband ? the dis- 
tinguished William Anspach, who was a thief and 
an outcast ? Could her father and his father be 
bankrupts ? ♦ 

Telling the coachman to remain, weak with 
excitement she slowly mounted the low flight of 
stairs, and went directly to her father’s room. 

It was half-past three o’clock, the hour at which 


268 not of her fa therms race. 

Andersen always arrived from down-town, and 
there he lay with closed eyes, on the sofa taking his 
usual nap before dinner. Jennie touched him on 
the arm. As he turned his head to look at her, she 
held the newspaper out. “ Can this be true, father, 
that William Anspach is a thief and a forger, and 
you a bankrupt ? ” 

“ William Anspach, the thief, has run away,” re- 
plied Andersen deliberately, as he sat up, ‘‘ but I 
don’t acknowledge bankruptcy. He has robbed old 
Anspach and me, and forged our names. I don’t 
acknowledge that I am broken. It is all newspaper 
talk. I will pull through all right,” he added, with 
a sickly laugh. 

“ Father, it can’t be true that the man I am 
to marry is a thief?” Jennie cried clasping her 
hands. 

“ Bill Anspach, of course he’s a thief,” he an- 
swered, as he lay down again. 

“ Wont you tell me all ? ” Jennie pleaded. 

“ There is nothing more,” Andersen replied ; 

I am sleepy.” 

Mrs. Anspach must know it all, Jennie thought. 
I will go there. “ Father,” she whispered to him, 
“ I am going to the Anspachs’.” 

“Curse the Anspachs!” he cried; “they’ve 
brought all my trouble on me.” 

Jennie hurried down to the pavement. As she 
was about to open the carriage door, some one 
touched her on the arm. 

She turned, and there stood Harry Erskine, 


THE OLD LOVE, 269 

She tried to enter the carriage, but he caught her 
cloak and held her. 

“Jennie,” he said, “I came here to say a word 
to you. Your father has gone all to pieces, and 
the man you hoped to marry is a thief, and has run 
away from you. But I am sorry it came out so 
soon. If the robbery had not been discovered till 
a day or two later, you would have seen that I 
was the cause of your disgrace ; for I told your 
thief and his mother that you were black, and 
Anspach would not have married you anyhow, rob- 
bery or no robbery. 

“ But there is one satisfaction I am to have,” he 
continued, “ the public will read my story about 
you, when you lived in Virginia, to-morrow in the 
newspaper.” As Erskine said this, he looked 
back at a good-looking young man who stood 
close behind him, and listened with a critical air to 
every word. 

“ This is Mr. What-is-your-name,” Erskine went 
on, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder at 
his companion, “ he is a reporter for the Enquirer,, 
and 1 have given his paper all I krrow about you 
as a nigger in Virginia, Jennie. It will be pub- 
lished, with a full account of the Andersen and 
Anspach frauds, to-morrow. My story is so good 
that the Enquirer is afraid I may give it to some 
other paper, and so this Mr. What-is-your-name 
has been sent to keep me company, to see that I 
don’t tell what I know to anybody else. Good-by, 
Jennie, I am quits with you now. You once 


270 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

slapped my face, when I kissed you in the kitchen 
down South ! I don’t remember that half as well 
as I do the day you turned your back on me up- 
stairs there, in the hotel, when you were with that 
thief Anspach.” Then Erskine turned on hiS heel 
and was' gone. 

Jennie clutched the carriage door to keep from 
falling. Her heart stopped beating. The coach- 
man saw her distress, and jumping off the box, ran 
to assist her, but she motioned him back. 

“ Are you ailing. Miss Jennie ? ” he asked. 

“ Drive to Mrs. Anspach’s,” she answered as she 
gained the seat, not knowing what she said. 

That day and every day, the prayer of the little 
teacher had ascended to Heaven through the Vir- 
ginia pines for Jennie Andersen. Would the hand 
of God stay the wolves from the track of the 
wounded deer ? Lover, fortune, reputation gone, 
in an hour, nothing left but treacherous beauty ? 

In the carriage Jennie’s senses returned to her. 
The calmness and the strength of desperation 
came to her. She would go to the Anspachs, even 
with Erskine’s words, “ I have told your thief and 
his mother that you are black,” still ringing in her 
ears ; for where else could she learn the truth ? 
what else could she do ? The uncertainty of her 
fate was too horrible to bear, and wait. Could all 
that had happened in the last hour be real ? Yes, 
there was her father, she remembered, stretched on 
the sofa, telling her that William Anspach was a 
thief, — oh merciful God ! it was all true. 


THE OLD LOVE. 


271 


When the carriage reached the Anspachs, two 
well-dressed gentlemen stood on the steps. As 
Jennie rang the bell, one of them said: “Pardon 
me, but we have been ringing here for some time 
and cannot make ourselves heard. Can you give 
me any particulars of the awful calamity that has 
befallen the Anspachs ? !’ Both gentlemen peered 
into her face to catch her answer. 

“ I cannot,” Jennie replied, motioning to the 
coachman to go down to the basement entrance 
and ring. 

“ You can’t get in there,” the second gentleman 
said, “ we have tried. You are Mr. Anspach’s 
daughter, are you not Where is your brother, 
Mr. William Anspach ?” 

The coachman gained recognition by rapping on 
the window, and the butler opened the front door, 
just wide enough to admit Jennie. As he did so, 
the two gentlemen each flourished a ten dollar 
bill before his face, and whispered something 
in his ear about an interview. They were re- 
porters. 

The butler, who was a little intoxicated, informed 
Jennie in the hall, that Mr. and Mrs. Anspach had 
fled, with Mortimor Hardenberg and their daughter 
Elsie, somewhere out of the city. No one was in 
the house but a law officer. “ Mr. Anspach told 
me that they were ruined and never would come 
back,” the man said, with a drunken tear. 

• “WTere is Mr. William Anspach?” Jennie 
asked in a faint voice. 


272 


NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 


“ Don’t you know, Miss Andersen ? they say he 
has gone to South America.” 

Jennie sat down in the drawing-room to collect 
her thoughts. What could she do ? Erskine’s 
betrayal of her secret would be published the next 
morning. Then all New York would point the fin- 
ger of scorn at her. 

Suddenly she recollected that the Enquirer., the 
newspaper that Harry Erskine said he had given 
the secret to, was Mr. Amory’s paper. She would 
see Mr. Amory and ask him to suppress Erskine’s 
story, she thought. Ah, she had not the courage. 
Mr. Amory was not her friend of late — but Mr. 
Fishbourne knew Mr. Amory, they were friends. 

Yes, she would see Mr. Fishbourne at once 
and beg him to ask Mr. Amory to save her. 

Stop ! what will Mr. Fishbourne say when he 
sees the girl he once loved coming to his office down- 
town, alone at dusk ? Be quick ! Be quick — 
there is no time to think of this. The story will 
go forth to-morrow. It is five o’clock, Mr. Fish- 
bourne is often down-town till six.” She remem- 
bered that he told her this long, long ago, when 
they were at Tuxedo together. 

How the recollection of Tuxedo and Newport 
and Fishbourne’s low, “ I love you,” came back to 
her ! Oh, it was so long ago. 

Along Fifth Avenue and in the club windows 
were many familiar faces. They all recognized 
the carriage with the blinds down, and stared at it. 
It was the carriage of bankrupt General Andersen. 


THE OLD LOVE. 


273 


Fishbourne was ready to go home. He was sit- 
ting in his private office, reading the last account 
of the Anspach and Andersen failure in the Eve- 
ning Post. “ Poor Jennie,” he thought. He looked 
up and Jennie Andersen stood before him. 

“Mr. Fishbourne,” she said, before he could 
rise, “ I have come to you for help, there is no one 
else to help me.” 

Fishbourne rose and gave her his hand. “ Miss 
Andersen, anything I can do, I will do with pleas- 
ure. Your father’s failure is a great shock to me.” 

“Not that, not that,” Jennie answered. “Mr. 
Fishbourne,” she cried, hiding her face in her 
hands, “ you know all about my birth. A man has 
given the history of it to the Enquirer to publish 
to-morrow. You can save me. You can have the 
story suppressed, if you will ask it as a favor from 
your friend, Mr. Amory, the editor.” 

Fishbourne put on his overcoat in haste. With- 
out acknowledging it to himself he was anxious 
to escape from Jennie’s presence. Her distress 
wakened the old love in his breast. He could not 
trust himself before her. 

“ I will see Mr. Amory at once. Miss Ander- 
sen,” he said with alacrity ; “ wait till I return.” 

On the way downstairs he dreaded his return. 

As he hurried up Nassau Street toward Amory’s 
office, Fishbourne’s breast was filled with conflict- 
ing emotions. What a complication of motives 
there is in the heart of every man. First, like a 
true gentleman, Fishbourne pitied a woman in dire 


274 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

distress, and stood ready to do anything that lay in 
his power to assist her. But, secondly, Jennie 
Andersen’s presence and sorrows revealed his love 
for her. There it was still, a mad passion that 
stared him in the face, tempting him to fall on his 
knees, and beg her to fly with him, to marry him, 
to ruin him. And then over and above all, there 
was another feeling, that came to him and drove 
him on to Amory’s office with quickened steps. 
The feeling was this ; it was of the utmost import- 
ance to Mr. Thomas Fishbourne the successful 
man of the world, to stop the publication of the 
facts concerning the disgraceful birth of the woman, 
who every one in society said, had refused to marry 
him. 

So it happened that there were three persons, 
with respect to motives, hurrying up Nassau Street 
to beg Mr. Amory, the editor of the Enquirer to 
suppress a scandal concerning the birth of Miss 
Jennie Andersen, the well-known beauty of New 
York. 

The first was Mr. Thomas Fishbourne, a noble 
fellow anxious to defend, with the last drop of his 
blood, an innocent and beautiful creature from the 
hounds that were pursuing her. 

The second was Tom Fishbourne, a mad lover. 

The third was Thomas Fishbourne, Esquire, a 
cool-headed man of the world, deeply engaged in 
looking out for his own interests in his profession 
and in society, and straining every nerve, on the 
present occasion^ to prevent the publication in the 


THE OLD LOVE. 


275 


newspapers of a story, that he had offered his 
heart and hand to a well-known woman, who was 
the octoroon daughter of the bankrupt General 
Andersen. 

The last mentioned of these three, Thomas Fish- 
bourne, Esquire, was the controlling spirit of the 
group, and was pretty sure to decide any difference 
of opinion among the three, concerning the love of 
Miss Jennie Andersen. 

Editor Amory sat at his desk with a pile of 
corrected copy beside him. When the messenger 
gave him Fishbourne’s card, he rose hastily and 
went forward to meet his friend. 

“ Old boy, I am glad to see you, I want to talk 
with you about this awful piece of news to-day— the 
Anspach and Andersen failure. What a terrible 
thing it is, so unexpected, and that fellow Bill 
Anspach a forger, too — who can be trusted ? 

“But I have more to speak of," he continued, “a 
confidential communication to make, that you must 
not breathe till to-morrow. It belongs to our paper 
and will be printed in the morning’s issue. Jennie 
Andersen’s mother was a Virginia quadroon and 
was not married to General Andersen. I have Miss 
Jennie's entire history from the lips of one of her 
white playmates in the South, who has known her 
from infancy." 

As Amory ended, he looked at Fishbourne as a 
doctor surveys a patient to whom he has given an 
experimental dose of medicine. He was wonder- 
ing how the conventional lawyer felt on learn- 


276 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

ing that the woman he had tried to marry was a 
negress. 

Fishbourne winced a little, but recovered himself 
quickly. “ I know there is such a stor}^ Amory ; I 
know it and Miss Andersen knows it. The poor 
girl, almost out of her mind with fright and despair, 
has just come to my office. I am here from her, to 
ask you in her name, to suppress the scandal in your 
paper. She knows that it has been given to you.” 

There was a pause. Amory did not reply. Fish- 
bourne, with a surprised look, and a tremor in his 
voice, went on : 

“ I felt sure when I left my office, that if the 
proposed publication of the story came to your 
knowledge, you would suppress it without being 
asked, for the sake of your old friend. Miss Ander- 
sen, and of her father General Andersen.” 

Amory turned and looked out of the window. 
Fishbourne waited for him to speak. He spoke at 
length with deliberation. 

“ This is a matter of public news, of valuable 
public news ; it is the exclusive property of this 
paper. I would not be doing my duty to the paper 
and to the public if I suppressed it. Fishbourne, 
I must publish it.” 

“ Do you mean to call an old scandal concerning 
Miss Andersen’s early origin, public news,” cried 
Fishbourne. “ It is a low tale of private malice. 
The publication of it by you will disgrace an inno- 
cent girl, whom you have known for years. 

“ If I were an editor I would be too proud, too 


THE OLD LOVE. 


277 


much of a gentleman to print such a story about 
any woman ; and were I commanded to choose 
between ruining the reputation of an innocent girl, 
whom I had known for years, as you have known 
Miss Andersen, and abandoning my career as a 
journalist, I would leave the profession, without a 
moment’s hesitation.” 

‘‘ Everything that happens is public news,” 
Amory replied coldly, maintaining perfect control 
of his temper; “and this news .is all the more 
important coming, as it does, at the time of the 
great failure of General Andersen and the forgeries 
of Bill Anspach, to whom Miss Andersen is engaged 
to be married. No intelligent journalist is too 
proud, or too much of a gentleman, to publish any- 
thing that God Almighty permits to occur.” 

“ Amory,” Fishbourne answered in a trembling 
voice, “ you would not dare to publish this story, 
you know you would not, if ruin had not come to 
this unfortunate girl’s father, at whose table you 
have often sat, and who a week ago you called your 
friend. Miss Andersen is helpless, and you put a 
dagger in her heart, knowing there is no one to 
avenge her fall.” 

“ Come, come,” laughed Amory, “ you are get- 
ting personal, my friend, I will be a little bit per- 
sonal, too. We all know that this girl was a friend 
of yours. In fact, the world says she refused you. 
I do not wonder you are sensitive about the pub- 
lication of the story of her life, under these cir- 
cumstances, 


278 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

“ But don’t take it too much to heart, it will all be 
forgotten in a day or two; and I will see that no 
mention is made of your name, as one of her many 
suitors before she accepted the forger, Mr. Bill 
Anspach.” 

Pale as a sheet, Fishbourne faced Amory. “ Mr. 
Amory,”.he cried, “ I am not begging for myself, I 
am pleading for this poor girl. You have often 
bragged to me that a true journalist in these dem- 
ocratic days, never makes any distinction between 
the friendless and the powerful. Yet now to my 
face, you tell me that you deliberately propose to 
ruin the life of this unfortunate girl with your 
story, while you suppress anything in it that may 
affect me disagreeably. I ask you, as a journalist, 
and as a man, is this consistent, is it just, is it 
Christian ? ” 

“ Now, Fishbourne, I cannot talk with you any 
more,” Amory replied with an angry gesture ; “ you 
are not fitted to decide what is right in this matter. 
As I have told you, this piece of news is public 
news. The exclusive possession of it is worth a 
great deal of money and reputation to us. This 
girl is one of the best known beauties in New 
York. Some other paper would soon get the story 
on the heels of the great Anspach failure, if I did 
not publish it to-morrow. 

“Why, we have had the fellow who gave us the 
information — a man named Erskine — watched all 
the afternoon, in the company of one of our report- 
ers, to keep him from selling the important news 


THE OLD LOVE 


279 


we bought, to some one else, and I have just sent 
him back to Virginia in charge of a special agent. 
It would surprise you, if I told you what I paid the 
scoundrel for his story. 

“ No, I cannot listen to you. I must do my 
duty, even if I shock your refined sensibilities. 
Good-night. You will see the story in full in our 
morning issue, and a great sensation it will m^ike 
in New York.” 

Slowly Fishbourne returned to his office. How 
could he tell her ? When he left her, he had not 
doubted he would be successful. 

At length he stood before her. She read the 
answer in his face. 

“ Mr. Fishbourne, you have failed ; God have 
mercy on me, I am without a friend.” 

“ I am your friend,” Fishbourne cried, seizing 
Jennie’s hand, his voice choked with emotion. 

Oh ! that touch — the last hand that was to 
touch the poor girl, before she went forth disgraced 
and shunned, out of the sight, and knowledge, 
and thought, of the world she lived for, was the 
hand of the man she loved, the hand forever 
lost. 

Oh, God, could that hand put her away ! Joy ! 
its grasp was there. She felt the throb of Fish- 
bourne’s blood. His eyes met hers with passion- 
ate tenderness. He would rescue her. He would 
kneel to her again. She would be his forever. 

Ah, it was but for an instant — Fishbourne’s hand 
relaxed. He was himself again, kind but self- 


28 o 


NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 


possessed — once a sturdy Fishbourne of Philadel- 
phia, now a brisk New Yorker. 

He had just looked over the brink of an awful 
precipice ; the precipice of his love for Jennie 
Andersen. The sight of the rocks of social and 
professional ruin at the bottom, waiting for him to 
cast himself down the abyss upon them, made him 
giddy, and with perfect self-command he retired 
from the dizzy edge and sought safe ground. 

In silence they passed down the stairs. 

Good-by,” he whispered, as he closed the 
carriage door, “may God protect you.” 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

“l AM NOT BLACK.” 

T hree or four men were standing in the glare 
of the shop lights as Jennie entered the hotel. 
They all evidently recognized her as the daughter 
of the ruined Andersen, and gave her a prolonged 
stare. 

Upstairs a porter was stationed at her father’s 
locked door, to keep the newspaper men away, who 
were continually coming up and knocking for ad- 
mission. 

With some difficulty, Jennie prevailed upon her 
father to admit her. He had been in bed, covered 
up with all his clothes on, his old habit. 

“ Well, what have you heard ? ” he asked. 

With bitter tears the poor girl told him all. 

“ What could you expect ? ” he said sharply. 
“ Of course, Erskine sold what he knew about you 
to the paper for a good sum. They will make a 
fine story out of it against you to-morrow morn- 
ing. You were a fool to expect them to give up 
publishing it.” 

Oh, what a sharp pain was that. Her father 
thought the story was against her, not against him. 
He was white, she was black. Yes, when the truth 
was known, the world would scorn her for it, not 
281 


282 


NOT OF HER FA THERMS RACE. 


him. Hers was the disgrace and the sorrow. His 
was only the sin. She was the tainted daughter, 
he was the taint free father. 

General Andersen lay down again and Jennie sat 
beside him. In a few minutes he looked up and 
called her as if she were afar off. 

‘‘Jennie, I think you had better go back to Miss 
Gillingham right away to-night. The hotel people 
want their rooms. They sent up the bill this after- 
noon. I am a month behindhand in the rent, and 
when I told them I would pay when affairs grew 
better in Wall Street, they said we must give up 
these apartments to-morrow.” 

“ Where would you go if I went to Virginia, 
father?” she asked in a faint voice. 

“ I’ll go upstairs in a small room till matters are 
all right,” he replied petulantly. 

Jennie was quiet for a minute. Back to Vir- 
ginia, back to Virginia — she saw the old cabin 
again, and her coarse life with black Sophie, 
and then the school and Miss Gillingham. 

“ Miss Gillingham loved her,” she thought. 

Then with a shudder came a vision of the expo- 
sure in to-morrow’s Enquirer: “ Miss Andersen is 
a black woman.” This decided her. “Yes, I 
will go to Virginia, to-night, father,” she said. 
“You will promise to follow me if all does not turn 
out well, wont you, father ? ” she added piteously. 

Andersen made no answer as he lay with closed 
eyes. At last he looked up. “ Ring for a car- 
riage, we have just an hour,” he said. 


“/ AM NOT black: 


283 


Jennie called the maid and gave her instructions 
to pack her wardrobe the next day. General 
Andersen said he would store the trunks in New 
York. 

Are you going away because your father has 
failed, Miss Jennie ? ” the maid asked impertinently. 

Jennie paid the woman her due out of her own 
purse. 

Father and daughter were silent on their way 
to the Pennsylvania depot. 

As soon as Jennie had settled herself in the sleep- 
ing car, Andersen departed. 

“ They can tell ^all the stories they like about 
Virginia, now that she is gone,” he said to himself. 
“ I am not black.” 


CHAPTER XL. 

WHAT WAS THE END OF IT ALL? 

I T was just four o’clock the next afternoon when 
Jennie stepped from the car at Lunenberg. 

A night’s sleep, followed by a quiet day in the 
slow train, had rested her, and brought the bright 
color to her cheeks. An unexpected feeling of con- 
tentment, and even happiness, stole over her. She 
no longer dreaded Virginia. She was going to see 
Miss Gillingham, who loved her, and this was going 
home, for who else was there in the wide world who 
loved her ? 

Jennie was the only passenger to arrive by the 
train. The crowd of negroes of both sexes who 
were idling on the platform at the depot all ex- 
claimed in chorus ! “ There’s Miss Jennie Ander- 

sen. There she is ! Aint she handsome ! ” 

“ Why, Miss Jennie,” cried the postmaster and 
station-agent, an old Confederate soldier, who had 
lost a leg, “ have you come to see us ? How glad 
Miss Gillingham will be ! She comes for the mail 
every morning. She could not have known you 
were coming or she would have spoken of it. Miss 
Gillingham is very fond of you. Miss Jennie. 
When I give her a letter from you she can’t wait, 
but goes right off in the corner over there to read 
284 


WHAT WAS THE END OF IT ALL? 285, 

it. ' I am afraid you don’t write often. I see a 
great many more of her letters to you, than I do 
of yours to her.” 

“ Where is Miss Gillingham’s cottage, Captain 
Simpson ? ” Jennie asked. ' 

“ Of course, you don’t know. Miss Jennie, you * 
have never been here since it was built. It is on 
the old road about a quarter of a mile this side of 
the deserted Manor, where poor Mrs. Erskine died. 

I will drive you over there; it is a good two miles 
from here and a very lonely road. Just wait ten 
minutes till I close the ticket office and get my 
horse and wagon.” 

“ No, I thank you. Captain,” replied Jennie,. “ I 
know every step of the way, I would rather walk.” 

“You wont find Miss Gillingham at home yet; 
Miss Jennie,” the captain said. “ She does not 
leave the school till five o’clock, and then she has 
a walk of three miles.” 

“ I will wait for her in the house. Captain, I want 
to surprise her,” Jennie answered, walking briskly 
away. 

As she passed the store two old black women 
ran out. “ How de do, Miss Jennie,” they shouted, 

“ glad to see you once more, don’t you remember 
me ? I am Rachel, and this is old Jane. I suppose 
you have come to visit Miss Gillingham. She’ll be 
joyful.” 

“ Of course, I remember you,” Jennie replied, 
shaking hands with them both. 

Jennie passed on down the road, the two old 


286 NOT OF HER FATHER'S RACE. 

women watching her. Rachel turned and said to 
Jane : “ She’s splendid, she doesn’t look mean like 
her father or that fellow Harry Erskine.” 

“ Erskine is bad,” replied Jane. “ He never 
come here any more from the North.” 

• He came this very morning, Harry Erskine 
did, I saw him get olf the train,” answered Rachel 
solemnly. 

“ Only two miles to walk and it will be nearly 
two hours before Miss Gillingham reaches home,” 
Jennie thought as she walked slowly away. 

How tall and thick the pines were, that darkened 
the road and covered the old fields, once tilled by 
the slave, with a dense forest. 

The trees had grown since Jennie saw them last. 
They seemed to her like children, who had come to 
maturity in her absence. As she went along she 
recognized them one after one ; till she stopped at 
last to gaze at the great twisted branch, under 
which they found poor little Sister Sallie by the 
roadside, the day that Abraham Lincoln Jones, 
and Harry Erskine fought their battle. 

There was no path along the road, and few foot- 
prints. The track was wide and even, but the sun 
did not reach it long enough to dry the shallow 
puddles, and Jennie went from side to side pick- 
ing her leisurely way, to avoid them. 

Not a soul did she meet, not a footfall, not a 
sound did she hear — no distant lowing cattle, no 
bleating sheep, no singing birds ; the dark pines 
shut out all life. 


WHAT WAS THE END OF IT ALL? 287 

The gloomy quiet accorded with her thoughts. 
She liked it as she lingered along. She had parted 
from the world forever. “ It must be so. It must 
be so,” she kept saying to herself. “ My father 
ruined and I disgraced, what could I be in New 
York, even if William Anspach’s crimes had not 
added to my misfortunes, but a mark for the inso- 
lence of the women, and the insults of the men. 
Oh, how eagerly they must have read the story 
about me in the newspapers to-day ! 

“ Yes, it must be so. I will tell Miss Gillingham 
when I lay my head on her shoulder this evening, 
that I have come to teach in the school with her, 
and stay forever.” 

Jennie looked up as she said this, brushing the 
tears from her cheeks. A lovely scene lay before 
her. The road had left the dark forest, with a 
sudden turn to the right down a steep hill, and 
there, at her feet, was the beautiful valley of the 
James. For miles and miles the silver river ran, 
with fields and green woods along its banks. Far 
below her, the bright sun shone on the slates of the 
old Manor, that she knew so well. 

The blue sky overhead was full of light and 
hope. 

“ Why should I be sad,” she thought, as she 
stopped and gazed at the valley. “ What would I 
have been but an ignorant black girl without dear 
Miss Gillingham ; and now I am to spend my life 
in such a beautiful scene as this, with her.” 

She sat down on a stone and hummed a song. 


288 


NOT OF HER FATHER’S RACE. 


I will wait here and surprise Miss Gillingham on 
her way home,” she said to herself with a smile. 

Just then she heard a footfall in the road be- 
low. Some one was coming up the hill towards 
her. 

A sharp curve in the road hid the stranger, 
although the sound was close at hand. 

Jennie rose and started to walk on down the 
hill. A step or two, and the approaching stranger 
came into view, not ten yards away — a man with 
his head down and his hands swinging from side to 
side, toiling rapidly up the hill. Jennie recognized 
him instantly. It was Harry Erskine. 

Sudden terror prompted her to turn and run, but 
the man lifted his head and their eyes met in in- 
stant recognition. 

“ Jennie Andersen ! ” Erskine cried in frank 
astonishment, “you are here? ” 

His voice recalled Jennie to herself. She no 
longer feared him, and looking straight down the 
hill, she walked with compressed lips to the upper 
side of the road, and passed him. On she went 
with rapid steps, her heart beginning to flutter as 
the distance increased. 

Then she heard him running behind her. An 
instant more and his hand was on her shoulder. 

She sprang from his touch as if it were the sting 
of a viper, and turning round confronted him. 

“ Harry Erskine, what can you want with me ? ” 

“ I want to take a good look at you,” answered 
Erskine, “ and see how you look down in Vir- 


WHAT WAS THE END OF IT ALL? 289 

ginia among common folk. You never would let 
me touch the hem of your dress in New York, 
Jennie.” 

“ Will you not cease to persecute me here, as you 
did in the North?” Jennie cried in a pleading 
voice. “ I have sought a refuge to hide myself. I 
did not know you were here. I would have gone 
to the uttermost ends of the earth to avoid you.” 

“ Jennie,” sneered Erskine, “ I shall always claim 
your acquaintance wherever you are. We have 
known each other too long for me to give you up. 
You remember the time you slapped my face in the 
kitchen for trying to kiss you ? Remember it 
now,” he said, throwing his arm quickly round her 
neck and pressing his lips to her cheek. 

The attack was so sudden that Jennie was in his 
power for an instant, but only for an instant. 
Throwing her arms violently against his breast, she 
pushed him from her, and as he reeled back 
she struck him with her gloved hand full in the 
face. 

Oh, the knife ! The cruel knife, that gleamed 
in Erskine’s right hand ! “ Take that ! ” he cried, 

as the blade buried itself in her white neck, “ take 
that ! ” and as she retreated with upraised arms 
and fell, he followed her and kneeling beside her 
stabbed her again and again. 

Away ! Harry Erskine, away ! — a vessel sails 
from Norfolk for Australia to-night. It is five 
miles through the woods to Beverly on the Norfolk 
road. Freight train and ship shall bear you ten 


290 not of her FATHER’S RACE. 

thousand miles, to die a violent death in a foreign 
land. 

The sound of his hurried steps, as he breaks 
through the pines, has died away. He is gone for- 
ever. 

Now an hour has passed. There she lies. How 
quiet she is. The clouds overhead are aglow and 
down in the valley the sun is setting behind the old 
Manor. A soft wind blows up the hill. How 
quiet she is. Poor child, she had thought she would 
wait here for the coming of the little teacher. 

Listen ! from some distant cabin, a wild chant 
floats up the hillside. It is a negro hymn. What 
an unearthly sound it has. Now it has ceased. 

Hush ! there is a noise in the bushes, some one 
is coming. A red fox, whisking his long tail behind 
him, trots out of the woods and starts across the 
road. Midway he stops, throws up his head and 
sniffs the air. He has scented something. Slowly 
he makes a wide circle. Now he stops, he has 
caught sight of an object, and sniffs the air care- 
fully again. Now he advances timidly. He puts 
his cold nose to her hand. She is dead. Listen 
to the sharp clack of his tongue, as he laps the 
blood from the gash in her white neck. 

Suddenly he stops to listen with pointed ears ; 
then he throws up his head and disappears in the 
bushes. Some one is coming down the road, and 
the distant footfalls are plainly audible. 

It is Miss Gillingham, dressed in a plain brown 
suit, with a bundle of children’s slates in her hand. 


WHAT WAS THE END OF IT ALL? 291 

She does not like the dark woods, she has been hur- 
rying, and her face is flushed with the quick pace. 

As she conies out on the brow of the hill, she stops 
to look at the sinking sun and the peaceful scene, 
just as poor Jennie did. While she lingers, her 
eye wanders from the valley along the edge of the 
road below her, and catches the white flowers in 
the dead girl’s bonnet, stirred by the gentle breeze. 

Does Miss Gillingham start ? No, it is only 
something a little unusual that she has seen at the 
side of the road. Unconsciously she thinks she 
will look at k as she goes by. 

As she stands there, a brilliant scarlet tanager 
flies across the path in front of her, and lighting on 
the top of a tall tree, whistles an evening song. 

It is the first of these birds the little teacher has 
seen this spring, and she gazes at its scarlet plumage 
and forgets the white flowers in poor Jennie’s hat. 

Now she thinks it will be dark soon ; she must 
hurry home ; and drawing her shawl round her, she 
starts quickly away and walks down the hill, past 
Jennie lying beneath the pines by the roadside, 
dead in the night’s embrace. 


THE END. 



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